Deck 4: The Supreme Court in the American Political System: The Politics of Law

Question 1

According to the traditional legal model, or legal formalism, what do judges do?

A) They decide cases according to their own preferred outcome
B) They do whatever is necessary to avoid having their decision overturned
C) They mechanistically discover the law and apply it to the facts of the case
D) They study social, economic and political history to determine what outcome is best for society

Answer 1

C

Question 2

The primary difference between the regime politics approach and other major political science approaches toward the study of the Supreme Court regards what motivates judicial behavior. Explain how ""regime politics"", ""attitudinal"", and ""strategic choice"" approaches understand judicial motivation. Why is this difference important for understanding the rule of law?

Answer 2

No Answer

Question 3

What do regime politics theorists mean when they say that judicial views about the Constitution and legal institutions are "politically constructed?"

Answer 3

No Answer

Question 4

Describe how the regime politics approach to understanding judicial decision-making can "save" the rule of law in a post-Realist world.

Question 5

What are the two primary assumptions in the regime politics approach that seek to situate the Supreme Court in the broader political system?

Question 6

Which is a major criticism of the regime politics approach?

A) It may not lead to predictive models of judicial behavior
B) It assumes that judges are only motivated to advance their policy preferences
C) It conceptually separates views about law and politics
D) It fails to take seriously judicial views about the law

Question 7

What is the primary goal of the regime politics approach to Supreme Court decision-making?

A) To show that the Supreme Court is not simply a building, but is an institution defined by ideas about what their members ought to do
B) To prove that the Attitudinal Model is blatantly incorrect because it ignores the influence of the law and legal ideas in judicial decision-making
C) To show that in every case the majority bloc on the Supreme Court will always follow the policy and legal preferences of the dominant political regime
D) To understand how the rise and fall of electoral-political regimes influences Supreme Court behavior

Question 8

What is the central insight of the regime politics approach to Supreme Court decision-making?

A) Law and politics are inseparable in the judicial mind and both are shaped by the broader political forces found in electoral institutions
B) While the justices' behavior is motivated by their personal policy preferences, their behavior is nonetheless constrained because their decisions can still be invalidated or overturned by the Executive and Legislative branches of government
C) The justices never decide cases according to their sincere policy preferences
D) The justices write lengthy opinions citing legal ideas to cloak the fact that their decisions are based on their own ideology

Question 9

The "internal" strategic choice approach tends to analyze the way that the behavior a justice on the Supreme Court is conditioned by ________.

A) the collegial nature of the Court and the need to interact with fellow justices
B) the strategic terrain created by law and legal doctrine
C) the views of Congress and the president
D) the internal conflict between law and politics

Question 10

Which of the following is the key similarity between the attitudinal model and strategic choice approach for explaining Supreme Court decision-making?

A) The assumption that the justices' behavior is motivated by their individual policy preferences
B) Justices are unconstrained by the law or other institutional constraints from voting their sincere policy preferences
C) Justices make strategic calculations about the view of others, both on and off the Court
D) The assumption that all Supreme Court decisions can be coded as either liberal or conservative

Question 11

According to the attitudinal model of Supreme Court decision-making, how do justices vote in any given case?

A) However they think the president that appointed them would vote if he were a judge
B) They follow their own ideological and a priori policy preferences
C) They take into account how their fellow justices may vote and follow those they are most politically aligned with
D) They rely only on professional and legal norms that dictate what the Supreme Court ought to do in the case

Question 12

Law schools and the legal academy were less affected by changing conception of law as being linked to politics ________.

A) because all law professors are Legal Formalists
B) because the core function of law schools is to train legal practitioners and they do so by relying largely on the traditional models and ideas about the law
C) because the legal academy has little concern about theories of law and has been unsuccessful at integrating legal and political theory
D) because most people who view the law as intimately linked with politics become political scientists

Question 13

What is the primary observation made by legal realists in their critiques of legal formalism?

A) Judges don't just discover the law, they inevitably make the law
B) The law is independent and autonomous from politics
C) The life of the law is based in logic
D) The practice of law requires judges to master certain cannons of interpretation

Question 14

Political scientists who study the Supreme Court all believe that the Court's role and the behavior of the justices is shaped by politics. They disagree about whether it is shaped by law and legal norms. Explain how the ""attitudinal"", ""strategic choice"", and ""regime politics"" approaches differ in this regard. With which do you agree, and why?