Supreme Court Application of Deference Doctrines.

Judicial deference to administrative agencies has attracted much scholarly attention. Myriad articles debate the normative merits of different deference regimes. Much of this work implicitly assumes that deference regimes influence judicial review of agency behavior, but no studies to date have tested this assumption. This assumption requires greater justification since judges may apply deference doctrines strategically. Such strategic behavior is possible because deference doctrine is frequently ambiguous (e.g., the scope of Chevron). Even if deference regimes were precise, consistently applying them in complicated cases would be difficult. This study analyzes whether judges apply deference doctrines strategically by manipulating deference to support an outcome. The study uses the Eskridge and Baer (2008) dataset to estimate ideal points of justices over deference regimes in non-contentious cases. The study then uses these estimates to predict votes in contentious cases, where the incentive to behave strategically is greater. Preliminary results indicate that the deference ideal point is an insignificant predictor of votes in contentious cases, supporting the theory that justices apply deference doctrines strategically. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]