Justice-level heterogeneity in certiorari voting: US Supreme Court October terms 1939, 1968, and 1982

Abstract

Abstract Although the literature on US Supreme Court agenda-setting is sizable, justice-vote-level multivariate analyses of certiorari are almost exclusively limited to samples of discussed cases from 1986 to 1993. Moreover, these studies have done very little to explore justice-level heterogeneity on certiorari. Here, we address these lacunae by analyzing the predictors of individual justices’ cert votes on all paid cases from the 1939, 1968, and 1982 terms. We find substantial justice-level heterogeneity in the weight that justices place on the standard set of forces shaping the cert vote. We also show that some of this heterogeneity is associated with justices’ experience and ideological extremism, largely in theoretically predicted ways. In closing, we sound a note of caution on drawing conclusions about effects of justice attributes, when the number of justices is relatively small.