Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T23:45:55.569Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Rule of Law or the Rule of Politics? Harmonizing the Internal and External Views of Supreme Court Decision Making

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Stephen M. Feldman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Law professors and political scientists generally subscribe to opposed theories of Supreme Court decision making. Law professors, to a great degree, adhere to an internal view: Supreme Court justices decide cases according to legal rules, principles, and precedents. Political scientists follow an external view: justices decide cases according to their political ideologies or preferences. This article develops an interpretive-structural theory that harmonizes these seemingly opposed views. This interpretive-structural theory not only explains why the internal and external views often are both effective but also why, sometimes, one approach might be more effective than the other. The article concludes by comparing the interpretive-structural theory with the “new institutionalism” that is emerging in political science.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , Winter 2005 , pp. 89 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2005 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, Andrew. 1988. The System of Professions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Balkin, Jack M. 1992. What Is a Postmodern Constitutionalism Michigan Law Review 90:1966–90.Google Scholar
Balkin, Jack M. 2001. Bush v. Gore and the Boundary between Law and Politics. Yak Law Journal 110:1407–58.Google Scholar
Balkin, Jack M., and Sanford, Levinson. 2001. Understanding the Constitutional Revolution. Virginia Law Review 87:1045–1109.Google Scholar
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1992. Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Becker, Theodore L., ed. 1969. The Impact of Supreme Court Decisions. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Berger, Peter L. 1963. Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Bickel, Alexander M. 1986. The Least Dangerous Branch. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Bleicher, Josef, ed. 1980. Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics of Method, Philosophy, and Critiques. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Bloom, Anne. 2001. The “Post-attitudinal Moment”: Judicial Policymaking through the Lens of New Institutionalism.” Law and Society Review 35:219–30.Google Scholar
Bobbitt, Philip. 1982. Constitutional Fate. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bobbitt, Philip. 1991. Constitutional Interpretation. Oxford: B. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Brent, James C. 1999. An Agent and Two Principals: U.S. Court of Appeals Responses to Employment Division, Department of Human Resources v. Smith and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. American Politics Quarterly 27:236–66.Google Scholar
Brief of Amici Curiae Amherst College et al., Member of Congress et al. 2003. Grutter v. Bollinger. 2003. 123 S.Ct. 2325; Gratz v. Bollinger. 2003. 123 S.Ct. 2411; Nos. 02–241, 02–516.Google Scholar
Brief of Amici Curiae John Conyers, Jr., Member of Congress et al. 2003. Grutter v. Bollinger. 2003. 123 S.Ct. 2325; Gratz v. Bollinger. 2003. 123 S.Ct. 2411; Nos. 02–241, 02–516.Google Scholar
Cardozo, Benjamin N. 1921. The Nature of the Judicial Process. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Carrington, Paul. 1984. Of Law and the River. Journal of Legal Education 34:222.Google Scholar
Chemerinsky, Erwin. 1997. Constitutional Law Principles and Policies. New York: Aspen Law and Business.Google Scholar
Clayton, Cornell W. 1999. The Supreme Court and Political Jurisprudence: New and Old Institutionalisms.” In Supreme Court Decision-Making: New lnstitutionalist Approaches, ed. Cornell, W. Clayton and Howard, Gillman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Clayton, Cornell W., and Howard, Gillman. 1999. Introduction. In The Supreme Court in American Politics: New lnstitutionalist Interpretations, ed. Howard, Gillman and Cornell, W. Clayton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Collier, Charles W. 1991. The Use and Abuse of Humanistic Theory in Law: Reexamining the Assumptions of Interdisciplinary Legal Scholarship. Duke Law Journal 41:191–272.Google Scholar
Cooter, Robert. 2000. Do Good Laws Make Good Citizens? An Economic Analysis of Internalized Norms. Virginia Law Review 86:1577–1601.Google Scholar
Cornell, Saul, ed. 2000. Whose Right to Bear Arms Did the Second Amendment Protect?. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.Google Scholar
Coulson, Margaret A., and Carol, Riddell. 1970. Approaching Sociology: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Cross, Frank B. 2000. Institutions and Enforcement of the Bill of Rights. Cornell Law Review 85:1529–1608.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan D. 1982. On Deconstruction. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Cushman, Barry. 1994. Rethinking the New Deal Court. Virginia Law Review 80:201–61.Google Scholar
Cushman, Barry. 1998. Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. 1957. “Decision-Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker.” Journal of Public Law 6:279–95.Google Scholar
D'Amato, Anthony. 1989. Aspects of Deconstruction: The “Easy Case” of the Under-aged President. Northwestern University Law Review 84:250–55.Google Scholar
Delgado, Richard, and Jean, Stefancic. 1992. Images of the Outsider in American Law and Culture: Can Free Expression Remedy Systemic Social Ills Cornell Law Review 77:1258–90.Google Scholar
Devins, Neal. 1992. Judicial Matters. California Law Review 80:1027–69.Google Scholar
Devins, Neal. 2003. ”Explaining Grutter v. Bollinger.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 152:347–83.Google Scholar
Dickson, Del., ed. 2001. The Supreme Court in Conference, 1940–1985. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Douglas, William O., and Dorothy, S. Thomas. 1931. The Business Failures Project—II. An Analysis of Methods of Investigation. Yale Law Journal 40:1034–54.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1977. Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1983. Law as Interpretation. In The Politics of Interpretation, ed. Thomas Mitchell, W. J. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1985. A Matter of Principle. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1986. Law's Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1996. Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Editors 2000. Symposium on the Second Amendment: Fresh Looks. Chicago-Kent Law Review 76:3–600.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, and Jack, Knight. 1999. Mapping Out the Strategic Terrain: The Informational Role of Amici Curiae. In Clayton and Gillman 1999.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee Jack Knight, and Andrew, D. Martin. 2003. The Political (Science) Context of Judging. St. Louis University Law journal 47:783–817.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stephen M. 1991. The New Metaphysics: The Interpretive Turn in Jurisprudence. Iowa Law Review 76:661–99.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stephen M. 1992. Republican Revival/Interpretive Turn. Wisconsin Law Review 1992:679–732.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stephen M. 1993. The Persistence of Power and the Struggle for Dialogic Standards in Postmodern Constitutional Jurisprudence: Michelman, Habermas, and Civic Republicanism. Georgetown Law Journal 81:2243–90.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stephen M. 1997. Please Don't Wish Me a Merry Christmas: A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stephen M. 2000a. American Legal Thought from Premodemism to Postmodernism: An Intellectual Voyage. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stephen M. 2000b. Made for Each Other: The Interdependence of Deconstruction and Philosophical Hermeneutics. Philosophy and Social Criticism 26 (1): 51–70.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stephen M. 2000c. The Supreme Court in a Postmodern World: A Flying Elephant. Minnesota Law Review 84 (3): 673–711.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stephen M. Forthcoming A. The Transformation of an Academic Discipline: Law Professors in the Past and Future (or Toy Story Too). Journal of Legal Education.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stephen M. Forthcoming B. The Problem of Critique: Triangulating Habermas, Derrida, and Gadamer within Metamodernism. Contemporary Political Theory.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley. 1980. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fiss, Owen. 1982. Objectivity and Interpretation. Stanford Law Review 34:739–63.Google Scholar
Frank, Jerome. 1930. Law and the Modem Mind. New York: Brentano's.Google Scholar
Friedman, Barry. 1993. Dialogue and Judicial Review. Michigan Law Review 91:577–682.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stephen M. 1980. The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem. In Bleicher 1980, 128–40. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stephen M. 1989. Truth and Method. 2nd rev. ed. Trans. Weinsheimer, Joel and Marshall, Donald. New York: Crossroad.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Gillman, Howard. 1993. The Constitution Besieged: The Rise and Demise of Lochner Era Police Powers Jurisprudence. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Gillman, Howard. 1999. The Court as an Idea, Not a Building (or a Game): Interpretive Insti-tutionalism and the Analysis of Supreme Court Decision-Making. In Clayton and Gillman 1999.Google Scholar
Gillman, Howard. 2001. What's Law Got to Do With It? Judicial Behavioralists Test the “Legal Model” of Judicial Decision Making. Law Social Inquiry 26:465–504.Google Scholar
Graber, Mark A. 1991. Transforming Free Speech. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Graber, Mark A. 2002a. Constitutional Politics and Constitutional Theory: A Misunderstood and Neglected Relationship. Law Social Inquiry 27:309–38.Google Scholar
Graber, Mark A. 2002b. Rethinking Equal Protection in Dark Times. University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 4:314–47.Google Scholar
Greenhouse, Linda. 2003. In a Momentous Term, Justices Remake the Law, and the Court. New York Times, July 1, Al.Google Scholar
Griffin, Stephen M. 1996. American Constitutionalism from Theory to Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gunther, Gerald. 1972. Foreword: In Search of Evolving Doctrine on a Changing Court: A Model For a Newer Equal Protection. Harvard Law Review 86:1–49.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1980. The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality. In Bleicher 1980, 181–211.Google Scholar
Hart, H. L. A. 1961. The Concept of Law. Clarendon Law Series. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hirschl, Ran. 2000. The Political Origins of Judicial Empowerment through Constitutionalization: Lessons from Four Constitutional Revolutions. Law Social Inquiry 25:91.Google Scholar
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. 1880. Book Review: C. C. Langdell, 1879, A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts with a Summary. American Law Review 14:233.Google Scholar
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. 1991. The Common Law. New York: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Hunger, Bill. 1998. Hiking Wyoming. Helena, Mont.: Falcon Pub.Google Scholar
Hutcheson, Joseph. 1929. The Judgment Intuitive: The Function of the “Hunch” in Judicial Decision. Cornell Law Quarterly 14:274–88.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Arthur J. 1996. Taking Responsibility: Law's Relation to Justice and D'Amato's Deconstructive Practice. Northwestern University Law Review 90:1755–80.Google Scholar
Johnson, Phillip E. 1984. Do You Sincerely Want to Be Radical Stanford Law Review 36:247–91.Google Scholar
Kalman, Laura. 1999. Law, Politics, and the New Deal(s). Yale Law Journal 108:2165–213.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Duncan. 1997. A Critique of Adjudication Fin de Siècle. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Klein, David E. 2002. Making Law in the United States Courts of Appeals. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kramer, Larry. 2004. The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review. New York: Oxford Univeristy Press.Google Scholar
Lane, Charles. 2003. Civil Liberties Were Term's Big Winner. Washington Post, June 29, Al.Google Scholar
Langdell, Christopher C. 1879. A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Larson, Magali Sarfatti. 1977. The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Leiter, Brian. 1997. Rethinking Legal Realism: Toward a Naturalized Jurisprudence. Texas Law Review 76:267–315.Google Scholar
Leuchtenburg, William E. 1995. The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Levi, Edward H. 1949. An Introduction to Legal Reasoning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Sanford. 1989. The Embarrassing Second Amendment. Yale Law Journal 99:637–59.Google Scholar
Llewellyn, Karl N. 1930. The Bramble Bush. New York .Google Scholar
Merrill, Thomas W. 2003. The Making of The Second Rehnquist Court: A Preliminary Analysis. Saint Louis University Law Journal 47:569–657.Google Scholar
Minow, Martha, and Elizabeth, Spelman. 1990. In Context. Southern California Law Review 63:1597–652.Google Scholar
Moore, Michael S. 2003. The Plain Truth about Legal Truth. Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 26:23–47.Google Scholar
Mootz, Francis J. 1988. The Ontological Basis of Legal Hermeneutics: A Proposed Model of Inquiry Based on the Work of Gadamer, Habermas, and Ricoeur. Boston University Law Review 68:523–61.Google Scholar
Parker, Johnny C. 1991. Equal Protection Minus Strict Scrutiny Plus Benign Classification Equals What? Equality of Opportunity. Pace Law Review 11:213–42.Google Scholar
Plasencia, Madeleine. 1997. Who's Afraid of Humpty Dumpty? Deconstructionist References in Judicial Opinions. Seattle University Law Review 21:215–60.Google Scholar
Polling Report. com. Accessed March 29, 2004. Http://www.Pollingreport.Com/race.Htm.Google Scholar
Plasencia, Madeleine. Accessed March 30, 2004- Http://www.Pollingreport.Com/values.Htm.Google Scholar
Posner, Eric A. 2001. Strategies of Constitutional Scholarship. Law Social Inquiry 26:529–46.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 1990. The Problems of Jurisprudence. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 2004. The People's Court. New Republic, July 19, 32.Google Scholar
Pritchett, Herman C. 1948. The Roosevelt Court. New York: Macmillan Co.Google Scholar
Richards, Mark J., and Herbert, M. Kritzer. 2002. Jurisprudential Regimes in Supreme.Google Scholar
Court, Decision Making. American Political Science Review 96:305–20.Google Scholar
Richards, Mark J., 2003. Jurisprudential Regimes and Supreme Court Decisionmaking: The Lemon Regime and Establishment Clause Cases. Law and Society Review 37:827–40.Google Scholar
Romero, David W., and Francine, Sanders Romero. 2003. Precedent, Parity, and Racial Discrimination: A Federal/State Comparison of the Impact of Brown v. Board of Education. Law and Society Review 37:809–26.Google Scholar
Romero, Francine Sanders. 2000. The Supreme Court and the Protection of Minority Rights: An Empirical Examination of Racial Discrimination Cases. Law and Society Review 34:291–313.Google Scholar
Rubin, A. B. 1987. Does Law Matter? A Judge's Response to the Critical Legal Studies Movement. Journal of Legal Education 37:307–14.Google Scholar
Ruger, Theodore W., Kim, Pauline T., Martin, Andrew D., and Kevin, M. Quinn. 2004. The Supreme Court Forecasting Project: Legal and Political Science Approaches to Predicting Supreme Court Decisionmaking. Columbia Law Review 104:1150–209.Google Scholar
Saks, Michael J., and Edward, Krupat. 1988. Social Psychology and Its Applications. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Scalia, Antonin. 1989. The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules. University of Chicago Law Review 56:1175–88.Google Scholar
Schauer, Frederick. 1985. Easy Cases. Southern California Law Review 58:399–440.Google Scholar
Schauer, Frederick. 1988. Judging in a Corner of the Law. Southern California Law Review 61:1717–33.Google Scholar
Sears, David O. 1988. Social Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Sedler, Robert A. 1997. Understanding the Establishment Clause: The Perspective of Constitutional Litigation. Wayne Law Review 43:1317–438.Google Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A., and Harold, J. Spaeth. 1993. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A. 2002. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Rogers M. 1988. Political Jurisprudence, the “New Institutionalism,” and the Future of Public Law. American Political Science Review 82:89–108.Google Scholar
Smith, Rogers M. 1997. Civic Ideals. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Steven D. 1999. Believing Like a Lawyer. Boston College Law Review 40:1041–137.Google Scholar
Spaeth, Harold J., and Jeffrey, Allan Segal. 1999. Majority Rule or Minority Will: Adherence to Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sunstein, Cass. 2001. “Order without Law.” University of Chicago Law Review 68:757–73.Google Scholar
Tamanaha, Brian Z. 1997. Realistic Socio-Legal Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tiller, Emerson H., and Frank, B. Cross. 1999. A Modest Proposal for Improving American Justice. Columbia Law Review 99:215–34.Google Scholar
Tushnet, Mark V. 1999. Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll Results Accessed March 30, 2004. Http://www.Usatoday.Com/news/polls/tables/live/2003-07-28-Poll-Gays-Issues.Htm.Google Scholar
Wahlbeck, Paul James Spriggs, and Forrest, Maltzman. 1998. Marshalling the Court: Bargaining and Accommodation on the United States Supreme Court. American Journal of Political Science 42:294–315.Google Scholar
Wartenberg, Thomas E. 1990. The Forms of Power. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Wechsler, Herbert. 1959. Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law. Harvard Law Review 73:1–35.Google Scholar
Weinsheimer, Joel. 1985. Gadamer's Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
White, G. Edward. 2000. The Constitution and the New Deal. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Whittington, Keith E. 2000. ”Once More unto the Breach: Postbehavioralist Approaches to Judicial Politics. Law Social Inquiry 25:601–34.Google Scholar