Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making
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The U.S. Supreme Court is a public policy battleground in which organized interests attempt to etch their economic, legal, and political preferences into law through the filing of amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs. In Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, Paul M. Collins, Jr. explores how organized interests influence the justices' decision making, including how the justices vote and whether they choose to author concurrences and dissents. Collins presents theories of judicial choice derived from disciplines as diverse as law, marketing, political science, and social psychology. This theoretically rich and empirically rigorous treatment of decision-making on the nation's highest court, which represents the most comprehensive examination ever undertaken of the influence of U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs, provides clear evidence that interest groups play a significant role in shaping the justices' choices.Reviews
"Drawing on statistical data and theories of judicial choice, Collins presents an analysis of how organized interests influence the decision making in the US Supreme Court through the filing of amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs."
-Law & Social Inquiry, Fall 2009
"Professor Paul Collins provides a scholarly read that addresses a topic of consuming academic and legal interests: agenda setting on the Supreme Court. He meticulously analyzes all aspects of amici participation not only in depth, but also longitudinally - from the beginning of the Vinson Court in 1946 to the end of the 2001 term. None have investigated the subject as comprehensively and as thoroughly as Professor Collins, and I fully expect it to become the definitive work on amicus curiae participation and influence."
Harold Spaeth, Michigan State University
"Paul Collins presents a much-needed theory of interest group influence in the Supreme Court, and tests it in many innovative ways. In large part, Friends of the Supreme Court resolves the contentious question of whether or not interest groups effect Supreme Court decision making, and offers an inventive critique of the attitudinal model, complete with an entirely reasonable and new finding with respect to the influence of law. Given its use of and reliance upon interdisciplinary scholarship, I am certain the legal academy will take notice, as will those interested in political science generally, judicial behavior specifically, and those studying interest group politics."
Sara C. Benesh, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
"This is by far the most thoroughly documented, methodically sophisticated, and theoretically rich treatment of the role of amicus curiae in U.S. Supreme Court decision-making that exists to date. Paul Collins' research contributes significantly to the theoretical debate over whether law influences case outcomes at the Supreme Court. The data in Friends of the Supreme Court is incredibly comprehensive, covering thousands of Court decisions over an extended period of time, and the findings suggest an important shift in our understanding of judicial decision making, showing that amicus briefs exercise a substantial influence over the justices' decision making from the perspective of both the attitudinal and the legal models. Collins takes care in weaving individual examples throughout the book -providing a terrific context for the non-social scientist to understand the conclusions drawn from the quantitative analyses."
Stefanie Ann Lindquist, University of Texas School of Law
"In Friends of the Supreme Court, Paul Collins makes an outstanding contribution to the literature on interest group litigation by expanding our empirical and theoretical knowledge of the influence of amicus briefs on the voting behavior of Supreme Court justices."
-Paul Chen, Department of Political Science, Western Washington University
About the Author(s)
Paul M. Collins, Jr. is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. In 2006, he was awarded the Council of Graduate Schools/University Microfilms International Award for the Most Distinguished Dissertation in the Social Sciences defended between July 2004 and June 2006. His research focuses primarily on appellate court decision making, with a special interest in psychological theories of judicial choice. Collins's scholarship has been published in a wide array of the leading journals in political science and law.
