Title

Acclimation Effects and the Chief Justice: The Influence of Tenure and Role on the Decisional Behavior of the Court's Leader, 1888-2007

Authors

Authors

D. N. Lanier

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

Am. Polit. Res.

Keywords

U.S Supreme Court; judicial behavior; chief justice; acclimation effect; court appointees; associate justices; STATES-SUPREME-COURT; MAJORITY OPINION ASSIGNMENT; FRACTIONAL-INTEGRATION METHODS; PERSONAL ATTRIBUTE MODELS; CONSENSUAL; NORMS; REHNQUIST COURT; LONG MEMORY; TIME-SERIES; POLITICAL-SCIENCE; STRATEGIC CHOICE; Political Science

Abstract

Under the acclimation effect view, recent appointees to the Court modify their behavior in systematic ways early in their tenure as opposed to their later decisional tendencies. Similarly, many studies have examined the chief justice's unique behavior. his study blends these two rich strands and explores whether chief justices demonstrate an acclimation effect, such that their behavior changes systematically through time. Using more than a century of Court data, this study examines whether new chief justices' concurrence and dissent rates decline and whether they write fewer individual opinions gradually. I find that the chief justice's position serves to create an incentive structure that is uniquely associated with declining rates of specially concurring and dissenting votes in certain cases. Also, new chief justices pen fewer special concurrences and dissents in some policy areas. My results hence imply that the chief justice experiences unique acclimation effects in learning to marshal the Court.

Journal Title

American Politics Research

Volume

39

Issue/Number

4

Publication Date

1-1-2011

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

682

Last Page

723

WOS Identifier

WOS:000292083400003

ISSN

1532-673X

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