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Restraining the Court: Assessing Accounts of Congressional Attempts to Limit Supreme Court Authority
Author(s) -
Mark Alyx,
Zilis Michael A.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.1111/lsq.12187
Subject(s) - supreme court , legislature , political science , law , institution , context (archaeology) , order (exchange) , court of record , original jurisdiction , law and economics , sociology , economics , paleontology , finance , biology
We propose a multilevel account of legislative Court curbing in order to assess existing explanations as to why such proposals come about. We argue that although Court curbing is commonly seen as the result of institutional conflict between Congress and the Supreme Court, it is best understood as a product of three interrelated factors: the individual motivations on the part of lawmakers, the partisan context in which they operate, and institutional disagreements between Court and legislature. We find evidence that micro‐level factors offer an important insight into Court curbing that institution‐focused explanations alone cannot.