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The article examines the effect(s) of the intent of the U.S. Congress for enacting a law in the interpretation by the U.S. Supreme Court of said law. Also cited are the comments by Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia on congressional intent, the cases Zuni Public Schools v. Department of Education and Exxon Mobil v. Allapattah Services to illustrate the issue, and the systematic influence of congressional intent.

In the past few years the literature on international conflict and foreign policy has seen a renewed interest in systematically examining the role of domestic institutions. Yet, the revived interest has excluded the influence of national courts on the pol ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examined the influence of presidential rhetoric on the political environment in which American federal judges operate. A dataset of all presidential references to judges from 1789 through 1993 is utilized to ascertain judicial behavior. The study provides a frequency count of the number of statements about judges and a model on the influence of presidential rhetoric over the collective ideology of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The article examines whether political control of the U.S. Supreme Court is possible and, if so, whether judicial independence is simply a myth. It attempts to provide evidence that both the president and U.S. Congress have the capacity to control or at least influence the court. It argues that with regard to both civil rights and specific economic legislation, Congress has the ability not only to constrain justices, but also to further promote judicial decisions that align with their policy preferences.

To what extent are lower court judges anticipating how their decisions might be reviewed on appeal? Unfortunately, few empirical analyses concentrate on answering these important questions. This paper contributes to the debate by focusing on the anticipation of Supreme Court responses by judges on the Courts of Appeals. Do judges on the Courts of Appeals guess the preferences of Supreme Court justices when rendering decisions? Additionally, does this anticipatory behavior significantly impact or constrain the ability of these judges to maximize their personal policy preferences? To address these questions, I examine decisions rendered by the U.S. Courts of Appeals from 1953 to 1988, and their subsequent treatment by the U.S. Supreme Court, under a strategic choice statistical framework. Initially, the empirical results indicate that Appeals Court judges do anticipate responses from the Supreme Court, and adjust their behavior according to this perceived constraint. However, this constraint is not experienced by all appellate judges. During the Warren Court era it is apparent that the constraint is experienced by all appellate panels, regardless of ideology; yet, the likelihood of the Supreme Court granting certiorari is substantially higher for conservative decisions than for liberal ones. During the Burger Court era it is apparent that more liberal appellate panels experience this constraint to a higher degree that conservative appellate panels (and the likelihood of Supreme Court review increases substantially for liberal decisions). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the influences - legal, political and strategic - of opinion writing in both the U.S. Supreme Court and the High Court of Australia. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically tests a formal model of strategic interaction between judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]