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Objective Methods Results Conclusions A critical area of study of the federal courts includes those who serve on the nation's highest tribunals. While most studies of judicial diversity address the crucial issues of race or gender, we examine the cross‐time dynamics of religious affiliations within the federal courts in the United States to more broadly encompass the concept of diversity.We analyze over two centuries of data on the religious affiliations of judges on the District Courts and Courts of Appeals, as well as that of justices on the Supreme Court, by employing descriptive data derived from public sources and our own survey instrument, and multivariate time‐series models.Our mixed‐method analyses show that the federal courts, traditionally the near‐exclusive province of Protestants, have grown more religiously diverse over time. We illustrate that specific, salient political events, including President Wilson's appointment of Supreme Court Justice Brandeis in 1916 and the elections of Presidents Kennedy in 1960 and Carter in 1976, directly influenced the dynamics of religious affiliations in the federal courts.The ascent of religious diversity in the federal courts was neither smooth nor inevitable. By incorporating the notion of belonging as a measure of religious identity and affiliation, we exhibit that a multifaceted process over time transformed religious diversity in the federal courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manner in which agenda change occurs demonstrates how institutional arrangements influence agenda priorities in the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals. A neo-institutional theoretic perspective is employed to examine the dynamics of agenda formation in these courts. The article finds that the Supreme Court's agenda choices influence the decisions of litigants, interest groups, and lawyers to appeal certain cases to the Courts of Appeals. While the Supreme Court's agenda primarily is influenced by internal factors, it is constrained by agenda changes in the appeals courts. Critically, it is shown that these federal appellate courts exist within an endogenous system with respect to agenda formation, as both courts respond to agenda changes made in the other over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have been intrigued by the abrupt change in the rate of nonconsensual opinions that the Supreme Court has published over time, which substantially increased beginning with the battles concerning the court's New Deal transition in the 1930s. Notwithstanding, none of the prior studies on this topic has made any link, whether theoretical or empirical, between the Supreme Court's issuance of these special opinions and the justices’ policy preferences. We utilize fractional cointegration to examine the relationship between consensus, agendas, and decisionmaking on the Supreme Court. We find that there is a systematic interrelation between the justices’ policy preferences and their issuance of nonconsensual opinions that is dependent upon the policy agenda before the court. In turn, this connection influences the court's policy outcomes, demonstrating that the justices’ behavior regarding nonconsensual opinion writing is a classic example of judicial policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]