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Friends and Interveners

Interest Group Litigation in a Comparative Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Paul M. Collins Jr.  and
Lauren A. McCarthy
Paul M. Collins Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Lauren A. McCarthy
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
*
Contact the corresponding author at pmcollins@legal.umass.edu.
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Abstract

Interest groups attempt to shape the content of law and policy in a variety of venues, including the legal system. Though the bulk of research dedicated to understanding interest group participation in litigation occurs in the context of the United States, there have been growing efforts to explore this important topic from a cross-national perspective. We contribute to this literature by investigating interest group amicus curiae and intervener activity across 11 English-speaking high courts during the 1969–2002 era. Our results support our theoretical argument that institutional features of courts and nations heavily shape levels of organizational litigation, including the power of judicial review, the rules governing third-party participation, and the presence of a bill of rights. This research informs our understanding of institutional design, social movement litigation, and the democratic nature of courts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , Spring 2017 , pp. 55 - 80
Copyright
© 2017 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

Previous versions of this article were presented at the 2015 UMass Interdisciplinary Legal Studies Colloquium and the 2015 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, and to faculty and graduate students in the Department of Political Science at Binghamton University. We are grateful to the participants at those presentations for their feedback. We also thank Kirsten Carlson, Bert Kritzer, the editor, and the anonymous reviewers for their very thoughtful comments on this research and Alisa Cameron for her excellent research assistance.

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