The influence of ideology and attitudes on the decision-making process of Supreme Court justices has been well documented, such that the attitudinal model has emerged as the dominant paradigm for understanding judicial behavior. When ideology and personal preferences seem to eclipse legal factors, such as adherence to precedent and deference to the democratically-elected branches, outcries of 'judicial activism' have occurred. Previous studies (Lindquist and Cross 2009) have operationalized judicial activism and have provided measures for studying behavior that may be considered activist (as opposed to restrainist), further supporting the premise that ideology trumps other extra-attitudinal and legal factors in the judicial decision-making process. While the attitudinal model indicates that ideology is the strongest predictor of judicial decision-making, this research will include a number of legal variables that have significantly influenced justices' votes. As previous studies have demonstrated, an integrated model that combines a number of critical variables can have more explanatory power than one that relies on attitudinal reasons alone (Banks 1999; Hurwitz and Stefko 2004; Mishler and Sheehan 1996). As such, the purpose of this research is to examine individual level decision-making of the most ideological justices on the Burger and Rehnquist Courts (1969-2004) in regards to their activist behavior to overrule legal precedents and invalidate federal statutes. This research will employ multivariate regression analysis to assess the effects of attitudinal, legal and extra-attitudinal factors in the judicial decision-making process.

In 2006 an historic era of the Supreme Court came to a close with the retirement of its first female justice, Sandra Day O'Connor. This paper attempts to expand judicial behavior scholarship by examining O'Connor's policy preferences for possible ideological change during her twenty-five year tenure on the Court. Average liberalism scores for her overall and civil rights/civil liberties issue area votes show an increase in liberalism over time. The researcher employs time series cross section analysis with panel corrected standard errors to determine factors responsible for this increase. Issue change, interagreement with the other justices, changes in Court membership, ideological mood of the country, and political polarization account for the lion's share of the increase. Contrary to the prevailing attitudinal model, change of preference does occur; however, the issue of separating true preference change from other salient influences in a statistical model remains unresolved.

Esta dissertação discute três problemas dos estudos do judiciário: a discriminação de grupos sociais com impacto no tempo de sentença, nas condenações e no regime da pena; os incentivos ao recurso; e a influência de posições ideológicas dos juízes em suas decisões. Analisando os processos penais distribuídos na comarca de São Paulo em 2002, o trabalho conclui que não há padrões de discriminações por características sociais dos réus, mas sim variações decorrentes de possibilidades processuais, e uma das variáveis importantes para predizer o recurso é o regime da pena. Por fim, faz um estudo qualitativo com um pequeno grupo de juízes, que aponta uma pequena influência da posição ideológica no resultado dos processos e no incentivo ao recurso das sentenças. / This dissertation discusses three issues of judicial studies: the discrimination of social groups with an impact in the time of sentence, condemnations and disciplinary rules; stimulation to appeal; and the influence of the judge\'s ideological position on their decisions. Analyzing the penal processes of 2002 in the judicial districts of São Paulo, we conclude that defendants are not distinguished by their social backgrounds, but by variations resulting from processual possibilities, and one of the important variables for predicting appeals is the disciplinary rules. At last, we make a qualitative study with a small group of judges, indicating a tenuous influence of ideological position on the result of processes and the appealing of sentences.

Esta dissertação discute três problemas dos estudos do judiciário: a discriminação de grupos sociais com impacto no tempo de sentença, nas condenações e no regime da pena; os incentivos ao recurso; e a influência de posições ideológicas dos juízes em suas decisões. Analisando os processos penais distribuídos na comarca de São Paulo em 2002, o trabalho conclui que não há padrões de discriminações por características sociais dos réus, mas sim variações decorrentes de possibilidades processuais, e uma das variáveis importantes para predizer o recurso é o regime da pena. Por fim, faz um estudo qualitativo com um pequeno grupo de juízes, que aponta uma pequena influência da posição ideológica no resultado dos processos e no incentivo ao recurso das sentenças. / This dissertation discusses three issues of judicial studies: the discrimination of social groups with an impact in the time of sentence, condemnations and disciplinary rules; stimulation to appeal; and the influence of the judge\'s ideological position on their decisions. Analyzing the penal processes of 2002 in the judicial districts of São Paulo, we conclude that defendants are not distinguished by their social backgrounds, but by variations resulting from processual possibilities, and one of the important variables for predicting appeals is the disciplinary rules. At last, we make a qualitative study with a small group of judges, indicating a tenuous influence of ideological position on the result of processes and the appealing of sentences.

The interaction between the President and Congress is many times quite public and well documented (Cronin 1980; Covington et al. 1995; Fisher 1994; Schlesinger 2004). Similarly, relations between the Congress and the Supreme Court are well documented; Congress makes law and, if requested, the Court interprets it. The interaction between the president and the Court, however, is not nearly as well defined, and certainly not as public. Supreme Court cases involving the president directly are fairly rare. King and Meernik (1995) identify 347 cases involving the foreign policy powers of the president, decided from 1790 to 1996, which is roughly 1.5 cases per calendar year. This study will examine the influence of attitudinal and extra-attitudinal factors on the individual level decision-making of the U.S. Supreme Court justices in cases involving presidential power. By using both attitudinal and extra-attitudinal factors, such as public opinion and armed conflict, this study will explore the limitations of a simple attitudinal model in complex and highly salient cases such as those that involve presidential power. The cases to be examined will be all presidential power cases decided from 1949 to 2005 (N = 38). The unit of analysis will, however, be the justice's individual-level vote (N = 337).

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Many studies have been completed on factors affecting judicial decisions. Studies have focused on civil rights cases, economic cases, criminal cases, sexual discrimination and obscenity cases, but no work has specifically looked at religious liberty cases. This work examines the factors affecting United States Courts of Appeals judges' decision-making in religious liberty cases. I hypothesize that gender, race, religious background, prior judicial experience, circuit, region and litigant status will all influence the way judges vote in religious liberty cases. The explanatory power of this study is relatively low, but the results indicate that judges follow the law when making decisions in religious liberty cases.

The attitudinal model of judicial behavior dominates judicial politics scholarship, including studies of federal courts and agencies. Extant research finds limited support for legal constraints as determinants of judge behavior when agency decisions are under review. Attitudinal scholars suggest judges substitute their policy preferences in place of agency preferences. Contrarily, the legal model suggests judges defer to agencies because of procedures and doctrine rooted in the rule of law. This study tests hypotheses predicting whether federal agency review decisions in the U.S. Courts of Appeals during 1982-2002 are a function of judges‘ attitudes, namely ideology, or a function of legal constraints, including agency adherence to legally prescribed procedures and agency passing standard-of-review muster. Using logistic regression, I examine the impact of legal and ideological variables on the outcome of judges‘ reviews of agency decisions. Results support several hypotheses. Agency adherence to procedural standards, such as those outlined in the Administrative Procedures Act, increases the likelihood that a review panel will defer to the agency. If review panels and judges answer standard-of-review questions favorably toward agencies, review panels and judges are more likely to support agencies in final case outcomes. Individual judge votes to support agencies are influenced by the ideology of other judges on the review panel: if the ideology of the review panel is in agreement with the agency position, individual judges are more likely to support agencies in final case outcomes. Finally, a judge is more likely to dissent when he/she is in ideological (dis)agreement with the agency position. In sum, results suggest that judges‘ regard for law and regard for their judge colleagues informs decisionmaking. Judges often defer to federal administrative agencies, even when their personal policy preferences are not found to be significantly associated with decisions. Judges‘ ideological preferences appear to be less important in the U.S. Courts of Appeals than previous scholarship indicates, but ideology may influence judges‘ decisions through the ideological composition of the review panel and in dissent behavior. The implication is that the legal model of judicial behavior may be more prominent than the attitudinal model in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.

in the English language: The Political Character of Constitutional Review. In this thesis, we tried to find out whether constitutional review in the Czech Republic has at least partially a political character. In the Czech Republic, constitutional review is exercised by the Constitutional Court in two types of proceedings: (a) proceedings on derogation of statutes and other regulations (laws) and (b) proceedings on constitutional complaints against decisions or other interferences of public authorities in constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights or freedoms. In proceedings on derogation of laws, we found that judicial decision-making behaviour has at least partially a political character. The reason is, in particular, that (a) judges decide in favour of proposals for derogation of laws filed by legislators (deputies or senators) of the same political affiliation as the judges' appointing president more often than when the legislator's political affiliation is the opposite; (b) ideological assessment of the analysed decisions shows that ideological aspects of the decision-making of judges significantly correlate with the presumed ideology of their appointing president. Moreover, the differences in judicial activism are smaller than the differences between legislators of opposite political...

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