Who Writes?: A Dyadic Approach to Opinion Assignment in State Supreme Courts

• In Event: Judicial Decisions

Abstract

The majority opinion author has the greatest control over the policy output of the court, yet our understanding of the politics surrounding the assignment decision in state supreme courts is relatively limited. While researchers of the U.S. Supreme Court have been able to take account of the assignment of the majority opinion (e.g., Hall 2018; Maltzman, Spriggs, and Wahlbeck 2000; Segal and Spaeth 2002), their conclusions do not easily translate to the states. Much of this difficulty is because there is so much variation in the rules related to opinion assignment (random, rotational, or varying degrees of discretionary) and the position of the chief justice itself, including the selection mechanism and term length. In light of the range of institutional contexts found in the states, perhaps it is not surprising that much of the work on opinion assignment has focused on the powers of the chief justice (e.g., Christensen, Szmer, and Stritch 2012; Leonard and Ross 2019).

Focusing on the chief justice is instructive, but it is only half of the story. To gain a more complete understanding of the opinion assignment process, we must consider both the assigner and potential opinion authors. We seek to fill this gap in the literature with a unique dyadic analysis of the assignment process, accounting for the relationship between the opinion assigner and all justices who could possibly write the opinion. To do so, we examine the assignment decisions using an original dataset of all cases in three areas of law decided between 1990 and 2015 in the fifteen states with discretionary opinion assignment rules. In our analysis, we consider how institutional rules, ideological congruity, and demographic factors shape the assignment decision. By taking a dyadic approach, we will be better equipped to advance our understanding of this pivotal part of the decision-making process.

Authors

• Meghan E. Leonard, Illinois State University

• Joseph V. Ross, Florida Gulf Coast University