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Selecting the Select Few: The Discuss List and the U.S. Supreme Court's Agenda-Setting Process

Document Type

Article

Language

English (en)

Publication Date

2013

Publication Title

Social Science Quarterly

Abstract

Objective: We investigate whether informational cues differentially affect a petition for review at each stage of the U.S. Supreme Court's agenda-setting process. We specifically test how the cost of identifying a cue and the degree of information provided within it affect the cue's impact.

Methods: We use a random sample of archival data obtained from the private papers of Justice Harry A. Blackmun to jointly analyze the Court's discuss list and final outcome decisions.

Results: Confirming our expectations, we find that both positive cues and negative cues play different roles across the two stages of the Court's agenda-setting process.

Conclusions: These findings are noteworthy since they suggest that the impact of some commonly studied case attributes differs between when a case is selected for the initial level of review versus when it is added to the Court's plenary docket.

Keywords

Supreme Court, Agenda-Setting, Certiorari, Discuss List, Judicial Behavior, Case Selection, Institutional Decision-Making

Publication Citation

Ryan C. Black & Christina L. Boyd, Selecting the Select Few: The Discuss List and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Agenda-Setting Process, 94 Soc. Sci. Q. 1124 (2013)

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