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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.

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.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequent actions by the Bush administration, remind us that the federal courts often are required to resolve questions of individual rights in lieu of foreign policy concerns. This paper explores judicial influences in foreign policy litigation across all three levels of the federal judiciary to determine whether judges systematically rule in favor of foreign affairs when confronted with civil liberties challenges. Using an original dataset of federal cases from 1946-2000, the paper provides evidence that the federal judiciary is extremely deferential to governmental authority in the conduct of foreign relations. While the federal judiciary is prone to support foreign policy interests, it is important to understand the conditions under which these judges will rule in favor of civil liberties claims. An important influence is the ideological preferences of judges. The empirical results indicate that more liberal judges -- as measured by partisan affiliations of the appointing president -- are more likely to render decisions in favor of civil liberties. This result holds for each level of the federal judiciary, although the results are more pronounced in the Supreme Court, less so for the Appeals Courts, and the weakest for District Courts. A second important influence involves the presence of a national security defense. The empirical data suggest that lower court judges are significantly affected by these situations; systematically ruling in favor of foreign affairs. However, Supreme Court justices do not respond in a similar fashion; the presence of a specific national security defense is not significantly related to judicial decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the international norms that affect human rights decisions in criminal and civil cases. It states that increased rights protection is determined through structure of the court and agenda of the justices. It furthers states that international norms can modify state behavior through special mechanisms of socialization processes which may bring changes in the decisions of the court in criminal and civil cases.

There is a growing theoretical debate within the literature concerning the extent to which lower court judges anticipate how their decisions might be reviewed by the Supreme Court on appeal. Beginning with Songer, Segal, and Cameron (1994), and relying primarily on a principal-agent framework, scholars have produced conflicting evidence on whether the institutional structure of the judiciary impacts the decision-making process of lower court judges. We argue that one of the reasons for the theoretical disagreement is that previous analyses do not directly test whether lower court judges engage in strategic behavior. Our paper engages this discussion through the empirical test of a formal model depicting the relationship between the Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court in a variety of issue areas. Using a dataset of appellate cases (from 1953 to 2002) that have been reviewed by the Supreme Court, plus a random sample of appellate cases that were not reviewed, we argue that the current literature on judicial hierarchies is limited because scholars have not modeled specifically the potential strategic interdependence between court levels. Our analysis borrows a statistical model from the IR literature on strategic anticipation and adapts it to the judicial hierarchy to demonstrate the impact of potential Supreme Court responses on the decision calculus of appellate judges. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the last decade, observers of the judiciary have witnessed an increased politicization of the courts within several countries, accompanied by a diverse range of public responses concerning the "judicialization of politics" (Tate and Vallinder 1995). Several scholars (see in particular Gibson, Caldeira, and Baird 1998) have examined this phenomenon; yet, a majority of the literature is based on studies of established democracies. Less attention has been paid to emerging democracies where a lack of citizen support may create or reinforce a pervasive cycle of distrust. We argue that it is essential for scholars to focus on these areas to determine whether hypotheses generated by research conducted in established democracies remain consistent.Our paper, consequently, expands on this literature by examining judicial confidence among countries in Africa. We argue that an African perspective on this question is vitally important for two major reasons. First, since public perceptions toward procedural fairness in the judicial system affect overall feelings toward government (Rohrschneider 2005), it is essential to examine a region where political instability has been more the norm than the exception. Second, several scholars note the importance of the 'rule of law' to democratic transition and consolidation (see Ginsburg 2003). Consequently, it is important to examine public perceptions on the efficacy of the rule of law in a region where democratic consolidation has been relatively fragmented and inconsistent. Data for this analysis comes from seventeen (17) sub-Saharan countries surveyed by the Afrobarometer. To examine perceptions of confidence in the judicial branch we focus on the linkages between judicial legitimacy, institutional support, and public opinion. We test specific hypotheses about these linkages using data collected in three waves (2000, 2002, and 2005), combined with relevant country-specific data on democratic performance and consolidation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are state supreme court judges influenced by the model of contingent discretion, similar to their federal colleagues? Stated another way, do these judges render decisions purely in accordance with their sincere ideological preferences, or do legal factors - specifically the language of relevant state statutes - constrain their ability to vote according to their preferences? Numerous existing studies of judicial behavior focus on this tension between the attitudinal and legal models to determine the extent to which judges make decisions according to their individual ideological preferences or are constrained by legal factors.This paper contributes to the literature on judicial politics by incorporating a continuous empirical measure of legal constraint on judicial behavior. We posit that legal influences and ideological influences work in tandem among state supreme court judges. These judges are influenced by the model of contingent discretion 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. Using data from the Brace and Hall State Court Database, we examine whether institutional differences across state high courts interact with potential statutory constraints (from both the state and federal level) to affect judicial behavior. By examining state court behavior we can draw inferences about the influence of statutory language on the judiciary across several institutional structures and legal environments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]