Political scientists now agree that the Supreme Court is a major institutional policy maker in the American political system. But they have done little to relate that conclusion to democratic theory. Nor have they bothered to draw the implications for structural reform of the Court that seem to flow from such a relationship. Specifically, we have been less concerned with holding Supreme Court justices accountable to those they govern than seeing to it that legislators and executives provide acceptable policies. Such a discrepancy becomes increasingly diffiult to justify as we dilute the traditional role distinctions between judicial and other policy making institutions of government.

Generally speaking, accountability is promoted through two devices. The first is access to the policy maker—i.e., the opportunity to be heard, to express oneself, to communicate one's preferences effectively to those whose policy actions are directly relevant. If these preferences are not sufficiently heeded, then we reserve the right to replace the incumbent with one who will provide greater satisfaction in that regard. For executives and legislators, free expression and frequent elections are appropriate means to insure accountability. But since Supreme Court justices are appointed for life (formally “good behavior,” but in fact for life), access to Court review becomes crucial.

During the past decade students of the judicial process have devoted considerable resources to an examination of the influence of political party affiliation on judicial decision making. The consequences of this research are substantial due to the key position held by the political party variable in judicial “social background” theory and value questions will necessarily be raised if partisan membership is found to activate certain decisional propensities in a judge's behavior.

Research on the influence of party affiliation on judicial decision making, however, has not been distinguished by clear findings and has left us in a position from which we are unable to generalize to courts not yet studied. Early work on the political party variable concluded that its relationship with decision making did indeed exist. Schubert (1959: 129–142) and Ulmer (1962), in studying workmen's compensation decisions handed down by the Michigan Supreme Court, demonstrated the important role played by partisan politics on that particular tribunal.

Feierabend, Nesvold, and Feierabend (1970) suggest two major hypotheses relating the concept of permissiveness-coerciveness of political regimes to the occurrence of political instability. First, they expect that “Low levels of political coerciveness (that is, political permissiveness) and high levels of coerciveness are associated with internal stability while mid-levels of coerciveness are associated with political violence.” Second, they hypothesize that “The greater (lesser) the fluctuation in level of political coerciveness, the higher (lower) the level of political violence.” The justification of these hypotheses are largely in terms of the psychology of frustrations and aggression. Political coerciveness is conceptualized as a set of restraints on the behavior of individuals imposed by a political regime. The more restraints imposed by the regime the more likely is any particular individual to be inhibited from performing certain of his desired behaviors. This situation is seen as producing, in the aggregate, higher levels of system-wide frustrations. It is appreciated, however, that if the number of restraints imposed is sufficiently large, then along with higher levels of frustration there will also appear a deterrent effect. The deterrent effect will presumably prevent these frustrations from becoming manifest in politically violent behavior.