| The dissertation addresses competing theories of influence on the U.S. Supreme Court. In essence, the competing theoretical models differ over the location of Supreme Court policy. The Court median model proposes that the median justice sets policy; the agenda-setter model suggests that assignment of the majority opinion is an agenda-setting power that can draw policy away from the Court median; the majority median model indicates that Court policy reflects the median member of the majority coalition. All three models have theoretically compelling elements; however, there have been few systematic assessments of their empirical relevance, most of these have been limited to the final opinion-writing stage, and the evidence on their relative explanatory power is mixed. I analyze these three formal models of Court policy-making, and derive predictions that each makes for four stages of Court decision-making. Then, I test the predictions at the three non-final stages, using archival and original data for the Court terms 1946-1985. I find conditional support for the Court median and agenda-setter models. |
