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Judicial Biography and the Behavioral Persuasion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

J. Woodford Howard Jr.
J. Woodford Howard Jr.*
Affiliation:
Johns Hopkins University
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Extract

This paper appraises the relationship between judicial biography and judicial behavior research in two ways: (1) conceptually, by comparing them as modes of inquiry; and (2) empirically, by making an inventory of the behavioral content of 15. leading judicial biographies. The central theme is that judicial biographies and judicial behavior research are complementary. Conceptually, they have important common premises and problems as well as major differences. Empirically, judicial biographies also offer considerable insight into judicial behavior. Using generous standards, the inventory of 15 biographies derived 2,232 behavioral-like propositions in eight categories of behavioral research. More importantly, the biographies suggest a substantial number of hypotheses worthy of empirical investigation and validation. When viewed as case studies in judicial politics, judicial biographies thus become related to behavioral inquiry. And their strengths and weaknesses fall into place as reflecting properties generally associated with case study as a mode of political analysis.

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Articles
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American Political Science Review , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , September 1971 , pp. 704 - 715
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1971

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References

1 “The Writing of Judicial Biography—A Symposium,” Indiana Law Journal, 24 (1948), 363–400 Google Scholar. The stimulus for this paper was the 1969 APSA panel in honor of Alpheus T. Mason and Carl B. Swisher—pre-eminent judicial biographers among political scientists. I wish to acknowledge my debt to both and expressly to include my own work in the following criticism of biographies.

2 See, e.g., Schubert, Glendon (ed.), Judicial Behavior (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1964)Google Scholar; symposium, “Social Science Approaches to the Judicial Process,” Harvard Law Review, 79 (1966), 1551–1628 Google Scholar; and Grossman, Joel B. and Tanenhaus, Joseph (eds.), Frontiers of Judicial Research (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1969)Google Scholar.

3 See, e.g., Mason, Alpheus T., Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law (New York: Viking Press, 1956)Google Scholar. The biographical medium apparently has declined in popularity among younger political scientists. Peltason found that from 1951–54 more than one-fourth of political science doctoral dissertations completed in public law were biographical in character. From 1957–64, the figure for biographical dissertations in progress was 14 out of 70 or one-fifth. The 1967–69 in-progress figure was 10 out of 109 or less than one-tenth. See Peltason, Jack W., “Supreme Court Biography and the Study of Public Law,” in Dietze, Gottfried (ed.), Essays on the American Constitution (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Publishers, Inc., 1964), p. 215 Google Scholar; American Political Science Review, 61 (1967), p. 849 Google Scholar; P.S., 1 (Summer, 1968), p. 46 Google Scholar; and P.S., 2 (Summer, 1969), p. 433 Google Scholar.

4 For a wider appraisal, see Edinger, Lewis J., “Political Science and Political Biography,” Journal of Politics, 26 (1964), pp. 423, 628 Google Scholar. Students of political leadership apparently doubt the relevance of judicial biographies. Edinger excludes them from the fine bibliography in his Political Leadership in Industrialized Societies (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1967), pp. 348–66Google Scholar. Another recent bibliography omits biography altogether. “Theory and Research in the Study of Political Leadership: An Annotated Bibliography” (Public Affairs Research Bureau, Southern Illinois University, 1969)Google Scholar.

5 Useful lists and typologies of judicial biographies may be found in Spector, Robert M., “Judicial Biography and the U.S. Supreme Court,” American Journal of Legal History, 11 (1967), p. 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jack W. Peltason, “Supreme Court Biography and the Study of Public Law,” in Gottfried Dietze, loc. cit.; and Westin, Alan, Book Review, Yale Law Journal, 66 (1957), 462 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This analysis excludes works that are not book-length. Shorter, but often high-quality biographical studies of jurists may be found in the Dictionary of American Biography; the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences; “Studies in Judicial Biography,” Vanderbilt Law Review, vol. 10 (1957) and vol. 18 (1965)Google Scholar; Dunham, Allison and Kurland, Philip B. (eds.), Mr. Justice (rev. ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964)Google Scholar; and Friedman, Leon and Israel, Fred (eds.), The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969, Their Lives and Major Opinions, 4 vols. (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1969)Google Scholar.

6 This conception of biography has the disadvantage of excluding several types of biographical works—encomia, philosophic studies, and character studies—which collectively comprise the lion’s share of a voluminous literature, especially about Supreme Court justices. But it highlights the one common denominator of the leading biographies: each illuminates relationships among a personality (independent variable), his court or institution (intervening variable), and his polity (dependent variable). Younger students may be surprised to leam that lawyer John P. Frank, using different nomenclature, called those relationships the only justification for writing judicial biography back in 1948. “The Writing of Judicial Biography …,” op. cit., pp. 374–75.

7 Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964).

8 The discussion draws heavily from Eulau, Heinz, The Behavioral Persuasion in Politics (New York: Random House, Inc., 1963)Google Scholar; Dahl, Robert A., “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science,” American Political Science Review, 55 (1961), p. 763 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smelser, Neil J., Essays in Sociological Explanation (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Publishers, Inc., 1968)Google Scholar; Charlesworth, James C. (ed.), Contemporary Political Analysis (New York: The Free Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and Truman, David, “The Impact on Political Science of the Revolution in the Behavioral Sciences,” in Eulau, (ed.), Behavioralism in Political Science (1969), p. 38 Google Scholar.

9 Carl B. Swisher in “The Writing of Judicial Biography …,” op. cit., p. 382. Cardozo, Benjamin N., The Nature of the Judicial Process (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921), p. 174 Google Scholar.

10 Peltason, op. cit., p. 219.

11 304 U.S. 64 (1938); U.S. v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U.S. 1 (1895). Charles Fairman in “The Writing of Judicial Biography …,” op. cit., p. 365.

12 Cf. my “On the Fluidity of Judicial Choice,” American Political Science Review, 62 (1968), p. 43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Glendon Schubert, “The Dimensions of Decisional Response,” in Grossman and Tanenhaus, op. cit., p. 163.

13 Loeb, Louis S., “Judicial Behavior: Themes and Variations,” Public Administration Review, 26 (1966), p. 126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Eulau, , Behavioral Persuasion, pp. 85 ffGoogle Scholar; Smelser, op. cit., pp. 39–41, 100 ff. For excellent discussion, see Greenstein, Fred I., Personality and Politics (Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1969)Google Scholar.

15 Eulau, op. cit., pp. 89, 122; Smelser, op. cit., pp. 40, 100 ff; and Smith, M. Brewster, “A Map for Analysis of Personality and Politics,” Journal of Social Issues, 24 (1968), p. 15 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Schubert, , Judicial Behavior, pp. 1–3, 9–13, 62–65 Google Scholar.

17 T. McN. Simpson, III, to author, February 15, 1969.

18 On privacy, see Garraty, John A., The Nature of Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1957), pp. 72, 105 Google Scholar. On personality portrayal, see Westin, op. cit., p. 466. On ethical evaluation, see Dunham, Allison, Book Review, University of Chicago Law Review, 24 (1957), 797 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mason answered the privacy complaint in his The Supreme Court From Taft to Warren (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1958), p. 202 Google Scholar. Peltason demolished Dunham’s complaint in 1964. Peltason, op. cit., p. 224.

19 Cf. Swisher, Carl B., Stephen J. Field: Craftsman of the Law (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1930), pp. 167, 239 Google Scholar versus p. 81; Mason, , Stone, pp. 299, 425, 612, 733 versus pp. 232, 330, 350, 487, 630, 773Google Scholar.

20 “The Influence of the Chief Justice in the Decisional Process,” in Murphy, Walter F. and Pritchett, C. Herman, Courts, Judges, and Politics (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 497 Google Scholar. Murphy, Walter F., Elements of Judicial Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

21 Cf. the distinction between “conventional” and “behavioral” research in Schubert, Glendon, Judicial Policy-Making (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1965), p. 158 Google Scholar; and his “Academic Ideology and the Study of Adjudication,” American Political Science Review, 61 (1967), pp. 120, 127 Google Scholar.

22 ”In Meraoriam, Carl Brent Swisher,” Villanova Law Review, 13 (1968), 708 Google Scholar. Also see Pritchett, C. Herman, “Public Law and Judicial Behavior,” Journal of Politics, 30 (1968), p. 480 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 I am grateful to John E. Schofield for help in constructing the table and interpreting the data. The biographies surveyed are: Beveridge, Albert J., The Life of John Marshall, 4 vols. (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1916–1919)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Fairman, Charles, Mr. Justice Miller and The Supreme Court (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939)Google Scholar. Frank, John P., Justice Daniel Dissenting (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. King, Willard L., Melville Weston Fuller: Chief Justice of the United States (New York: Macmillan Co., 1950)Google Scholar. Levy, Leonard W., The Law of the Commonwealth and Chief Justice Shaw (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957)Google Scholar. Magrath, C. Peter, Morrison R. Waite: The Triumph of Character (New York: Macmillan Co., 1963)Google Scholar. Mason, Alpheus T., Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life (New York: Viking Press, 1946)Google Scholar; Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law (New York: Viking Press, 1956)Google Scholar; and William Howard Taft: Chief Justice (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964)Google Scholar. Morgan, Donald G., Justice William Johnson: The First Dissenter (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1954)Google Scholar. Paschal, Joel F., Mr. Justice Sutherland: A Man Against the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951)Google Scholar. Pusey, Merlo J., Charles Evans Hughes, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Reid, John Phillip, Chief Justice: The Judicial World of Charles Doe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Swisher, Carl B., Stephen J. Field: Craftsman of the Law (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1930)Google Scholar; Roger B. Taney (New York: Macmillan Co., 1935)Google Scholar.

24 For example, Fairman’s Miller includes a disagreement matrix prepared by Justice Blatchford (p. 387), and King’s Fuller has a rudimentary intensity scale of the Income Tax Case in which votes are correlated with per capita wealth of the justice’s home states (p. 214, p. 217).

25 Swisher, , Taney, p. 100, pp. 357-58, 364, 374, 555, 584 Google Scholar, and Schubert, Glendon, “Justice Jackson’s Judicial Philosophy” American Political Science Review, 59 (1965), p. 940 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. King, , Fuller, pp. 126, 332–35Google Scholar, and Danelski, op. cit., p. 497.

26 Swisher, , Field, pp. 203–204 Google Scholar.

27 Although the sample of authors is too small for meaningful correlation, students of biography may be interested that the inventory (1) suggests no rise in the quantity of behavioral-like output through time, (2) offers little support for tempting distinctions between biographical schools—e.g., a political jurisprudence school à la Swisher or an attitudinal school à la Mason, and (3) shows no large variances by profession of author.

28 Doe, op. cit., pp. 153-55, 165.

29 Magrath, op. cit., pp. 252, 274; Mason, Taft, pp. 232-33; Pusey, op. cit., p. 663; and Mason, , Stone, p. 217 Google Scholar.

30 See, e.g., Frankfurter’s account of efforts to unseat Murphy in my Mr. Justice Murphy: A Political Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 396 Google Scholar.

31 See Wolfenstein, E. Victor, The Revolutionary Personality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and his “Some Psychological Aspects of Crisis Leaders,” in Edinger, op. cit., p. 155. Gottfried, Alex, “The Use of Socio-Psychological Categories in the Study of Political Personality,” Western Political Quarterly, 8 (1955), p. 234 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Fairman, op. cit., pp. 17, 124, 193; King, op. cit., pp. 11, 34, 126ff., 134. Also see Reid, op. cit., p. 155.

33 Lasswell, Harold D., Power and Personality (New York: W. W. Norton, Inc., 1948), pp. 64, 242 Google Scholar.

34 Vose, Clement E., Book Review, American Political Science Review, 63 (1970), p. 1288 Google Scholar.

35 Cf Betty Glad, “The Role of Psychoanalytic Biography in Political Science,” paper delivered at 1968 APSA meeting. Also, Edel, Leon, “The Biographer and Psycho-Analysis,” Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 42 (1961), p. 458 Google ScholarPubMed. For discussion of single-actor and aggregate psychological analysis, see Greenstein, op. cit., chapters 3 and 4.

36 Swisher, , Taney, pp. 100, 442, 495, 503ffGoogle Scholar.

37 On ideology, see, e.g., Beveridge, op. cit., I, p. 9; Morgan, op. cit., pp. 22-23; Magrath, op. cit., p. 72. On legal careers, see, e.g., Beveridge, op. cit., I, p. 56; Magrath, op. cit., p. 31.

38 The Life of John Marshall, I, pp. 79, 126, 145, 314 Google Scholar; IV, p. 3.

39 Grossman, Joel B., “Social Backgrounds and Judicial Decisions,” Journal of Politics, 29 (1967), p. 334 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bowen, Don R., “The Explanation of Judicial Voting Behavior from Sociological Characteristics of Judges,” (Ph.D. diss., Yale, 1965)Google Scholar; and Sprague, John D., Voting Patterns of the United States Supreme Court: Cases in Federalism, 1889-1959 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1968)Google Scholar.

40 Mason, , Taft, pp. 18, 20ff.Google Scholar, 30. Beveridge, op. cit., IV, pp. 134, 140 n.

41 Frank, op. cit., p. 250; Fairman, op. cit., p. 293; Magrath, op. cit., p. 285; Swisher, , Field, pp. 165, 249, 283–85Google Scholar.

42 Mason, , Stone, pp. 323, 381 Google Scholar; Taft, p. 275.

43 For a remarkable parallel to the Fortas-Wolfson affair, see Mason, Taft, p. 274.

44 Greenstein, op. cit., p. 50.

45 Mason, , Taft, pp. 251, 262 Google Scholar. Magrath, op. cit., p. 153.

46 Peltason, op. cit., p. 233.

47 For example, cross-reference suggests one theoretical refinement. Social and task leadership perhaps should be differentiated as between conference and the remainder of group activity. While Taft permitted VanDevanter task leadership in conference, Taft maintained task leadership in administration and opinion output. VanDevanter and “pen paralysis.” Hughes dominated conferences to the point of torpor, but dissent rates suggest that Hughes hardly dominated the policy output of his court in the sense of Marshall, Shaw, or Doe. If a chief justice's effectiveness as task leader is measured by dissent rate, Taft comes off as more effective than Hughes. Cf. Danelski. op. cit.

48 Exceptions are Danelski, David J., “Values as Variables in Judicial Decision-Making,” 19 Vanderbilt Law Review, 721 (1966)Google Scholar; James, Dorothy B., “Role Theory and the Supreme Court,” Journal of Politics, 30 (1968), p. 160 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Glendon Schubert, “Jackson's Judicial Philosophy,” op. cit., p. 940.

49 Beveridge, op. cit., in, pp. 357, 528, 595; IV, pp. 396, 454, 517.

50 See, e.g., Becker, Theodore L. (ed.), The Impact of Supreme Court Decisions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

51 See Shapiro, Martin, Law and Politics in the Supreme Court: New Approaches to Political Jurisprudence (New York: The Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

52 See, e.g., Beveridge, op. cit., TV, p. 279; Swisher, , Field, p. 203 Google Scholar and Taney, pp. 415, 419; Mason, Brandeis, pp. 518, 560, and Stone, pp. 302, 426, 443, 533, 591, 605, 645.

53 Beveridge, op. cit., III, pp. 49, 75, 178; IV, pp. 276, 396, 446, 453-54, 517. Swisher, , Taney, pp. 347-48, 391-92, 411 Google Scholar.

54 Fairman, op. cit., pp. 60, 124, 176, 207, 280. Magrath, op. cit., pp. 132, 139-40, 145, 148-49, 169, 294, 315-16.

55 Dahl, Robert A., “Decision-Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker,” Journal of Public Law, 6 (1957), 285. Fair-man, op. cit., pp. 176, 398Google Scholar.

56 For the “functions” of judicial biography, see Robert McCloskey, G., Book Review, Harvard Law Review, 77 (1964), 1172 Google Scholar; and Murphy, Walter F., Book Review, Yale Law Journal, 78 (1969), 728 Google Scholar.

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