Supreme Court oral argument (OA) is one of many face-to-face settings of political interaction. This article describes a methodology for the systematic observation and measurement of behavior in OA developed in a study of over 300 randomly selected cases from the 1969-1981 terms of the U.S. Supreme Court. Five sources of observation are integrated into the OA database at the speaking turn level of analysis: the actual text of verbal behavior; categorical behavior codes; aspects of language use and speech behavior events; electro-acoustical measurement of voice quality; and content analysis of subject matter. Preliminary data are presented to illustrate the methodology and its application to theoretical concerns of the research project.

No—this is not what it seems. This is not a discourse on statistics, but it is a discussion of a type of methodology—that of how, when they are writing, political scientists can better approach their audience. Put differently, this article is related to the more general proposition that scholars need to demonstrate not only that they can conduct research but also that they can communicate it effectively to a wide audience. And, although critical of some social science writing, it carries a suggestion for increasing your range of publication options.

In the interest of providing graduate students with information and advice concerning their graduate careers, APSA has begun a series of efforts to identify “good practices” or “best practices” with respect to a number of aspects of graduate education. The thought is that faculty, junior and senior, may serve as sources of useful information that supplements what departments provide to their own students, At a minimum, from these efforts, students would be able to learn of a variety of perspectives, some of which might be different from those to which they had already been exposed by their own advisors and other faculty with whom they have studied.

Background

The Nature of the Problem. Some years ago, when I had the privilege of serving as a program director at the National Science Foundation, the proposals I read left me with a distinct impression: many researchers presented exciting research ideas, but in a high proportion of cases the exciting ideas were embedded in horrendously constructed proposals. In relatively few cases were the proposals well constructed, with important elements missing or underdeveloped. One would often find, for example, after a clear initial statement of the research problem and an effectively executed literature review, a thin or nonexistent research design or, without transition, a statement of the statistics to be used. Hypotheses, where present, were often not derived from the discussed literature, or from any literature.

Civil rights litigation undertaken by lawyers associated with interest groups, particularly the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), is of ten described as planned” litigation. This article examines litigation by these organizations from the late 1960s through the early 1980s to explore the extent to which “planned litigation” is planned. The author interviewed both staff attorneys for organizations participating in race relations litigation and “cooperating attorneys” associated with such organizations.

Elements of planned litigation discussed are litigating organizations’ choices—of areas of law on which to focus, of cases, of federal or state courts, and of amicus curiae participation—and the dynamics of litigation—including relations between staff and cooperating attorneys, litigators’ control of cases, and the effect of Supreme Court decisions on litigation strategy.

The interviews reveal that much interest-group civil rights litigation is not selected deductively on the basis of previously developed criteria but instead develops inductively from cases that come to the organizations and is affected by pressure and circumstance. Counter to the view, stemming from Brown v. Board of Education, that civil rights litigation is undertaken as planned “campaigns” based on “blueprints,” it appears that much about “planned” litigation is problematic, with many constraints imposed by the actions of others and by resource problems, with the result that many deviations from litigation strategy occur. Thus much “planned” litigation is responsive and reflexive and beyond litigators’ control.

The National Science Foundation provides support for basic social science research on law and legal institutions through the Law and Social Sciences Program. The primary emphasis of the program is on research that will enhance understanding of the nature and sources of variation in legal rules and institutions and their consequences. Proposals directed to developing methodologies for the social scientific study of law are also considered. Proposals concerning criminal aspects of the law will be considered if they relate primarily to theoretical questions in the social scientific study of the law. However, the central focus of the Law and Social Sciences Program is on noncriminal aspects of the legal system.

Those who anticipate submitting proposals might keep in mind the broad concerns that are central to the program:

1. The capacity of law, through statutes, administrative regulations, and court decisions, to affect individual and organizational behavior, its limitations in regulating action, conditions which enhance or diminish the impact of law, and the processes by which that impact is achieved or diminished.

2. The use of alternative methods, both formal (legal) and informal (extra-legal), for dealing with disputes, and factors that contribute to the selection of the alternatives used.

3. Change in the legal system, its causes and the processes by which it occurs, with particular emphasis on factors affecting the use of law as an instrument of social control.