A Winning Strategy: How Attorneys Use Vanity Citations to Sway Justices

• In Event: Judicial Actors' Decisions and Relationships

Brief Overview

Using a novel dataset of citations used in Supreme Court merits briefs between the 1984 and 2018 terms, we examine how attorneys use the justices’ past decisions to appeal for their votes and whether or not the strategy is effective.

Authors

• Elizabeth Lane, Louisiana State University

• Jessica A. Schoenherr, University of South Carolina-Columbia