Bridging the Landmark Measurement Debate: Applying the Legislative Accomplishment Approach to the Decisions of the Supreme Court
41 Pages Posted: 15 Jul 2014
Date Written: July 8, 2014
Abstract
In order to bridge the existing divide between the landmark policy indicators of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, this analysis applies the legislative accomplishment framework to the Court’s orally argued cases (1899 to 2004 terms). The following measurement strategy invokes an expansive array of dichotomous indicators of the landmark status of the Court’s decisions as well as newly gathered data from Shepard’s Citations of LexisNexis. The resulting measure can be utilized to better understand the institutional development of the Court as well as to leverage differences in the policy-making processes of elected and life tenured branches.
Keywords: U.S. Congress; U.S. Supreme Court; landmark; measurement; policy; salience; legislative accomplishment
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