NCJ Number
185225
Journal
Social Science Quarterly Volume: 81 Issue: 3 Dated: September 2000 Pages: 798-809
Date Published
September 2000
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This study examined the opinion assignments of Chief Justices of the United States Supreme Court from 1888 to 1940 and used three models: the organizational, the institutional, and the attitudinal.
Abstract
The research empirically examined opinion assignments through a data set collected by the authors. The data covered the 10,506 case decisions reported in Supreme Court Reporter during the tenures of four Chief Justices: Melville W. Fuller (1888-1909), Edward Douglass White (1910-20), William Howard Taft (1921-28), and Charles Evans Hughes (1928-40). Results revealed that these chief justices made assignments based on institutional and organizational criteria, rather than for ideological reasons. The analysis concluded that this difference was probably related to contextual factors that have changed for the modern Supreme Court. Findings suggested that assigning opinions may be more complicated for Chief Justices than scholars have suggested. Table, footnotes, and 26 references (Author abstract modified)