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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.

The article examines the politics of judicial retirement in Canada and Great Britain. It formulates a theory of judicial retirement for judges sitting on the courts of last resort in the countries. It estimates models of judicial retirement that incorporates personal, institutional and political factors to analyze the determinants of judicial retirements for judges appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords.

The question of who wins and loses in appellate courts may be the most important question we seek to answer as judicial scholars. In fact, "Who gets what?" has traditionally been viewed as the central question in the study of politics generally. Therefore, understanding who wins in the courts is an essential component of a full appreciation of "the authoritative allocation of values" in society (Easton 1953). In this paper we examine the relationship between the status of litigants, especially the comparison of repeat player "haves" (RP) to one-shotters (OS) who are usually "have-nots," and their rates of success in top appellate courts in the common law world. A number of prior studies employing what is generally referred to as "party capability theory" have examined how the resources and litigation experience of litigants affect their chances for success. Using data from the highest courts of appeals across six countries we explore winners and losers in a comparative context. The results indicate that there is greater variation in who wins and who loses than party capability theory would suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 Yet, the revived interest has excluded the influence of national courts on the pol ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to offer a starting point for building an understanding of the factors that influence public confidence in the courts of nations that are undergoing a transition from authoritarianism to democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article identifies a broader definition of party capability theory by examining changes within the Australian High Court since 1970. The study is premised on an article written by Marc Galanter which hypothesized there would be differential success rates in litigation among parties who came from the "haves" as opposed to the "have-nots."

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.

Are state supreme court judges influenced by the contingent attitudinal model, similar to their federal colleagues? Stated another way, do these judges render decisions according to their ideological preferences, or are they constrained by the language of state statutes? Using data from the Judge Level State Supreme Court Database, we analyze the votes of individual judges in 1995 to determine whether their behavior is constrained by legislation. Our results indicate that more detailed language (resulting in statutes with higher word counts) significantly limits the discretion afforded to liberal judges while simultaneously facilitating the ideological voting of their conservative colleagues. These results suggest a theoretically important way of thinking about judicial behavior. Rather than conceptualizing the legal model and the attitudinal model as competitors, the empirical evidence suggests that legal influences and ideological influences also work in tandem in among state supreme courts. These judges are influenced by the contingent attitudinal model and, occasionally, the traditional tension exists and statutory language constrains the judges from voting ideologically. However, in other instances these two influences operate in a more dynamic and interdependent manner and we observe statutory language facilitating the expression of ideological voting among the judges. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By considering temporal changes in judicial influence in a number of cases in Eastern Europe and Latin America, we explain when the courts become viable political actors and why some courts assume an important policy-making role faster than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the concept of judicial legitimacy in several countries formerly belonging to the Soviet Union. Discussion of institutional legitimacy; Impact of economic factos on political opinions; Measurement of the judicial institutions of the age of countries.