This dissertation seeks to describe and explain the connection between The Supreme Court and politics outside of the judicial system. It is a case study of the reaction to the Brown v. Board of Education integration decision in the American South. I apply a theoretical model of “judicialization,” arguing that when courts affect politics outside of the judicial system, they reshape politics to resemble the adversarial legal system, sparking polarized conflict and causing non-judicial political actors to make arguments in the form of constitutional doctrine. Analyzing editorials and letters to the editor from Southern newspapers, I show that debate after Brown was characterized by appeals to constitutional principles, and that Brown increased the salience of segregation in schools as a subject of political debate. I also supplement my Southern newspaper data with data from African-American newspapers and analyze Southern elections in the periods immediately before and after the education integration decision to assess the impact of the Court’s education decision on both voters and candidates. / text

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.

Amicus curiae participation by interest groups has greatly increased over the past few decades in the Supreme Court despite a limited understanding of their influence. Previous literature has suggested that at the U.S. Supreme Court level, interest groups as amici are no more likely to get justices votes in a liberal or conservative direction than when no amicus brief is provided. Some literature, however, suggests that there are certain types of cases in which amicus briefs may be influential, such as in constitutional, statutory, and civil rights cases. By conducting several comparisons of means tests for the number of justice votes in a certain ideological direction with and without an amicus brief, this study investigates the influence of briefs on justice votes in civil rights and economic cases. The findings support the previous literature that suggests briefs are no more likely to be related to an increased number of votes in the direction of the brief, but finds that civil rights cases may be positively affected by amicus briefs while economic cases are negatively affected. This thesis concludes by explaining that the content of the briefs submitted should change in order to be more effective in influencing justices or that interest groups should use their efforts in other avenues to impact policy. / Master of Arts

Recusal, or judicial disqualification, occurs when a judge abstains from a particular legal proceeding because of a personal conflict of interest. All levels of the judicial system and some administrative agencies in the United States apply the concept of recusal, but this study focuses on the United States Supreme Court. Title 28 of the United States Code provides standards (not obligatory by legal means) on when Supreme Court Justices should recuse themselves. But Supreme Court Justices are themselves the arbiters of their own recusal and often these substantive standards are not met. The method of study applied is theoretical, using both quantitative and qualitative data from past Supreme Court cases.

Recusal, or judicial disqualification, occurs when a judge abstains from a particular legal proceeding because of a personal conflict of interest. All levels of the judicial system and some administrative agencies in the United States apply the concept of recusal, but this study focuses on the United States Supreme Court. Title 28 of the United States Code provides standards (not obligatory by legal means) on when Supreme Court Justices should recuse themselves. But Supreme Court Justices are themselves the arbiters of their own recusal and often these substantive standards are not met. The method of study applied is theoretical, using both quantitative and qualitative data from past Supreme Court cases.

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Many people assume that when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidates a federal statute as unconstitutional, the Court's decision establishes binding precedent that narrows the U.S. Congress's available options. This thesis examines whether Congress has in practice been able to effectively circumvent Supreme Court precedents while still acting consistently with such precedents in a narrow sense by not repassing an identical statute. More specifically, this work explores whether the U.S. Congress was able to repass new statutes similar to those previously invalidated by the Rehnquist Court (1986-2005). To more fully probe this issue, this study examines how often Congress has responded in such a manner, how successful Congress was in replicating the initial invalidated statute's breadth and potency, the success of the amended statute's subsequent implementation or whether the new statutes survived judicial scrutiny, and lastly, whether legislative policy goals or Court precedents prevailed. The research focused on the Rehnquist Court because it invalidated an unprecedented 34 federal statutes. This analysis found that Congress offered 11 proposals, but only repassed four statutes attempting to replicate the initial invalidated statutes. Nevertheless, in the four instances of successful reenactment, Congress was able to achieve, in practice, indistinguishable potency and breadth in two statutes and identical potency with significantly narrower breadth in one statute. This work is significant because it demonstrates that occasionally Congress has utilized available tools—in this case repassing analogous statutes—to effectively counter Supreme Court precedents. The Supreme Court is not always the exclusive or irrevocable arbitrator of constitutional controversies. / Master of Arts

This thesis examines the views of freedoms of press and speech held by the twelve earliest justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, as the Sedition Act of 1798 raised their earliest First Amendment questions including the breadth of those freedoms and of seditious libel. The thesis discusses three aspects of the early justices' views, which add to existing studies. First, the context of those justices' views was growing challenges to the restrictive Blackstone and Mansfield definition of freedom of press as only freedom from prior restraint (licensing) and as not also freedom from subsequent restraint such as seditious libel prosecution. Those challenges were reflected in broad language protecting freedoms of press and speech, and in the absence of language stating that the English common law of rights or of seditious libel was left unaltered. That crucial context of growing challenges has not been detailed in existing literature. (Chapter 3.) Second, the views of each early justice on press and speech are chronicled for the period 1789-1798. That discloses express commitments to those freedoms, which are absent from existing literature, and no adoption of the Blackstone definition before the 1798 crisis. (Chapters 4-5.) Third, the cases and reasoning of the six sitting justices upholding the Sedition Act of 1798 are chronicled and assessed, along with the views of the six remaining justices. That reveals that most remaining justices and also a significant minority within the Federalist party rejected the Sedition Act. Yet positions on the Sedition Act have been only cursorily discussed for four sitting justices and have been overlooked for the other eight justices, as well as for the Federalist party's minority, for the critical period 1798-1800. (Chapters 6-7.) The thesis proposes reasons for that divergence between the pre-1798 commitment of all justices to freedoms of press and speech, and the support given by most sitting justices to the Sedition Act, in contrast to apparent opposition by most remaining justices. The primary reasons are their opposing positions on several connected issues: the extent of rights to dissent, the challenges to the Blackstone definition and to seditious libel, the effect of new state and federal constitutions on seditious libel and on common law rights, strength of attachment to freedoms of press and speech and to seditious libel, and most sitting justices' changes of position to embrace the Blackstone definition. The thesis calls into question conventional views in existing literature on each of those three aspects. First, Levy and others express the dominant view that freedom of press in state declarations of rights and the First Amendment 'was used in its prevailing common law or Blackstonian sense to mean a guarantee against previous restraints and a subjection to subsequent restraints for licentious or seditious abuse,' so that contrary evidence 'does not exist,' and that 'no other definition of freedom of the press by anyone anywhere in America before 1798' existed. Instead, opposition to the essence of seditious libel had been mounting over the decades. Second, the early justices are usually portrayed as having nothing to say about freedoms of press and speech before 1798. Instead, nearly all exhibited commitment to those freedoms before that crucial year, though half the early justices upheld the Sedition Act during 1798-1800. Third, the Federalist party, the early justices, and the states except Virginia and Kentucky are all usually described as unanimously supporting the Sedition Act. Instead, the Federalists divided over the Act, and the early justices did as well, with an unrecognized but significant minority of the party, and nearly half of the early justices, opposing the Sedition Act, as did several additional states.

This dissertation provides a theoretically grounded framework for investigating "legal rhetoric." By making a distinction between the discursive elements of a Legal system and the broader rhetorical notion of Law, rhetorical critics can better understand the interdependent relationship between citizens, their legal structures, and their cultures. The Legal system represents the forum in which legal disputes are addressed. In contrast, the Law signifies the principles of justice and fairness that give rise to legal disputes addressed by the Legal system. This dissertation emphasizes the important role that media play in disseminating information about specific legal disputes and providing citizens an opportunity to reflect on which principles of justice and fairness are to be valued. This study specifically examines the text, reasoning, and media coverage of Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, two U.S. Supreme Court cases related to the University of Michigan's use of racial classifications in its admissions process. By comparing which arguments and rhetorical elements from the Supreme Court's 2003 decisions were reported in the press, this dissertation both demonstrates the rhetorical concepts of the "Law" and the "Legal System" and suggests how citizens and rhetorical scholars can more fully critique legal texts. / text

This diploma thesis aims to analyze the issue of one of the most significant congressional powers found in Article I., Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Congressional power to regulate interstate commerce has been instrumental to the federal government's legislative efforts in many areas of law. This constitutional provision enabled the Congress to react to the changing conditions and new problems the country has been facing, especially in the area of working conditions, civil rights, criminal justice or even environmental law and many others. The expansion of power of the federal government, however, was not always greeted with enthusiasm, especially in the first three decades of the 20th century, before the Supreme Court began to read the commerce power much more broadly, to the point that it ceased to be a factual limitation of its powers. This trend was meant to be stopped by the New Federalism movement and the five new conservative justices who issued rulings that limited the scope of the Commerce Clause. However, this group of justices proved to be very inconsistent in its own approach toward this constitutional provision and eventually fell apart, which rendered Rehnquist's attempted constitutional revolution with respect to state's rights partly a failure. As the new Court membership under...