Stories abound within our culture, and rarely are stories bestowed more legitimacy than within the courts. Social "facts" might be established within the legal forum, but nonetheless connect to everyday life. Research in social movements and judicial politics is thus becoming increasingly useful as social movement organizations increasingly compete before the Court to effect cultural change through the reification of their stories. Lesbian, gay and bisexuals form one group of storytellers whose "collective stories" are told. It is this set of stories that this paper investigates, following the "narrative turn" in sociology to analyze LGB social movement narratives in the empirical setting of the Supreme Court. I present the findings of my content analysis of the amicus curiae, or "friend of the Court," briefs and Court opinions in the Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence and Garner v. Texas cases, two of the most significant LGB rights cases, covering a span of nearly twenty years. Despite virtually identical casefacts, the Court handed down differing decisions, first ruling against the social movement before later reversing its decision. This research assesses how the narrative voices in the cases changed within the discourse of the Court, and how these collective narratives resonated within a changing culture. First, I assess how LGB social movement organizations, their allies, and countermovement organizations changed their framings and frame alignment processes, how they changed their emotions work and rhetoric, and how these changes were evidence of organizations' identity work processes during the interim between cases. Next, I assess changes in framings and frame alignment processes and emotions work and rhetoric within the opinions handed down by the Court. This serves two purposes: it allows for a comparison of organizational frame resonance with the Court, and also allows analysis of the decisions' resonance within the larger culture. Analysis is also made of the symbolic meanings found within the opinions of the Court in both cases. This analysis shows that LGB social movement and countermovement organizations operate within a cultural code of sexuality. Narratives are useful in observing how norms within this cultural code are enforced, strengthened, or changed by negotiation and legitimization before the Court. Consequently, this research contributes not only to our understandings of cultural change, but also to social movement theory, especially of identity work processes, to the field of social psychology, to the sociology of sexualities, and to the sociology of emotions and emotions work.

The past several decades have witnessed a remarkable increase in the number of amicus curiae briefs filed at the U.S. Supreme Court. While scholars debate the effectiveness of amicus curiae briefs, they generally agree on the effectiveness of briefs filed by executive attorneys. A plethora of studies address the amicus curiae brief activity of the solicitor general, but relatively few examine state attorneys general. State attorneys general are the legal representatives of the states and have become increasingly successful as amici since the early 1980s. I explore state attorney general amicus curiae brief activity and argue that existing theories of amicus curiae participation by the solicitor general and interest groups, are inadequate for state attorneys general because of the unique institutional context in which state attorneys general operate. State attorneys general, I argue, must balance political, legal, and administrative factors when filing amicus curiae briefs. I also recognizes that amicus curiae briefs are not a singular event and are instead a process in which actors make several decisions across a variety of contexts. Within each context each factor takes on a different weight. I conclude state attorneys general are strategic political actors who consider political, legal, and administrative factors in their amicus curiae briefs.

abstract: I examine how gender stereotypes influence the campaign advertisements utilized by candidates for state supreme court and how these gender stereotypes influence how voters react to these advertisements. Gender stereotypes have been found to have a profound impact in races for other offices (e.g., legislative, executive), but there is a lack of research on the role of gender stereotypes in state court elections. In my present research, I first conduct a content analysis of state supreme court advertisements over the course of four election years, looking specifically at how the candidates describe themselves in their advertisements. Based on these findings, I create advertisement scripts where I vary the gender of the candidate and the type of message employed by the candidate in order to test how the gender of the candidate and the content of the messages influences voter impressions of judicial candidates. In a second experiment, I create video advertisements based on these scripts and test how the video advertisements, as well as the candidate’s gender, affect impressions of these candidates. My analyses indicate that not only gender stereotypes play a role in the way judicial candidates create their advertisements, but they also impact the way voters form opinions about candidates running in judicial races. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Political Science 2017

Legal history is social history, family history, women's history, economic history, business history, and constitutional history; in fact it is a growth industry. Records from the civil division of the British Columbia Supreme Court furnish the best possible primary sources, the evidence for local studies in these fields. This thesis is put forward as a practical guide both for scholars who wish to search records from the Vancouver Supreme Court Registry and for archivists who need a conceptual framework for appraising civil court records. It traces the origins and common law traditions of the court, describes court administration and the rules for civil procedure, tabulates the kinds of record kept by the civil division, and works out for archivists a practical means of selection. / Arts, Faculty of / Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), School of / Graduate

The interactions, often clashes, between our branches of government are some of the most salient and important features of the U.S democratic system. The Supreme Court, given its unique position within this system, finds itself at the center of many of these clashes. While considerable literature in American political science dedicates itself to the study of the interactions between the Supreme Court and other political elites, we remain without a complete understanding of how political elites interact with the Court. Specifically, we fall short in our understanding of how political elites, both liberal and conservative, react following Supreme Court decisions governing their policy interests. This study intends to bridge this gap in knowledge. By studying the reactions of political elites following 8 specifically chosen Supreme Court decisions, via an extensive content search using an expansive newspaper database, this paper identifies an asymmetry in the actions taken by liberal and conservative political elites.

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This study investigated whether or not the membership of the United States Supreme Court affects the way the institution rules in cases regarding federal administrative agencies by collecting and comparing votes from 2018-2019 and 2020-2022. It found in the first section that justices showed an anti-deferential attitude towards agencies and in the second section a deferential attitude towards agencies, despite the conservative majority being larger in the second section. The result is likely due to the types of agencies and content of cases involved.

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A woman’s right to choose to have an abortion has been constitutionally protected since 1973 when, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that the state may not wholly restrict a woman’s choice to terminate a pregnancy. In Roe, the Court invoked the 14th Amendment’s imprecise guarantee of personal liberty as grounds for the right to terminate a pregnancy without excessive interference. In later cases, specifically Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), the Court clarified that mere possession of the right to abortion is insufficient to guarantee personal liberty– abortion seekers must be able to exercise their right, free of “undue burdens.” According to Casey, statutes which pose an undue burden to the right to an abortion violate the Constitution. This thesis considers whether the burdens placed on abortion seekers in Florida are constitutional or a violation of the 14th Amendment guarantee to equal protection under the law. In order to measure the diversity in burdens faced by abortion-seekers, I collect data on all 67 counties across Florida, guided by the Court’s definition of relevant variables for the purpose of abortion access: the number of providers, the availability of a judicial bypass of restrictions, and the physical distance to clinics. This data is combined in a single statistic, which is called the Unde Burden Score. There is tremendous variation in the score across Florida counties, posing a challenge to the promise of equal protection under the law and for those attempting to exercise their reproductive rights. The findings suggest that Florida’s intrastate access to abortion is incredibly contingent on geographic location, suggesting that the equal right to abortion exists in theory, but not in practice.