Justice's Opinion Writing in the U.S. Supreme Court, 1801-1945: Are Our Explanations Timebound?

Brenner and Heberlig's (2002) analysis of the Supreme Court justices' opinion writing from 1946-1997 found that both structural and personal background variables explained the variation in the justices' opinion writing, both the proportion of cases in which the justices wrote opinions and in differences among writing majority, dissenting and concurring opinions. These authors examined opinion writing in the context of the literature on the general question of why and how people participate in politics (Warro 2000; Hall 1996; Schiller 1995; Verba, Scholzman, and Brady 1995; Rosenstone and Hansen 1993; and Sinclair 1989). They identify and test eight structural, personal background, and other hypotheses and find evidence to support at least five of their hypotheses across the various types of opinion writing the judges engage in. Factors that decrease the probability of the justice writing an opinion includes the being in the position of chief justice and being ideological extreme relative to the rest of the bench. Factors that increase the probability of the justice writing an opinion include the prestige of the justice's law school, the justices' childhood social status, and tenure on the bench. We propose to both replicate and expand Brenner and Heberlig's backwards in time, across the remaining period of the Court's history, 1801-1945. We believe that it is particularly important to determine whether these explanations are time-bound. Additionally, we propose to expand the models, adding additional professional variables, such as the justices' prior experience in the judiciary (both federal and state/local) and academia, and additional personal background variables that the literature suggests affects political participation. We also propose to test different structural constraints for this particular period for the court, specifically in regard to the Court's changing circuit riding obligations overtime, and the variation in circuit riding obligations among the judges in terms of geographic distance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]