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Intracourt Dialogue

The Impact of US Supreme Court Dissents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Pamela Corley  and
Artemus Ward
Pamela Corley*
Affiliation:
Southern Methodist University
Artemus Ward
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University
*
Contact the corresponding author, Pamela Corley, at pccorley@smu.edu.
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Abstract

Dissenting opinions are part of the ongoing constitutional dialogue among elites both inside and out of the judiciary. In order to illustrate how dissents contribute to the ongoing constitutional dialogue among elites, we examine the effect of dissents on majority opinions in the US Supreme Court. We empirically assess their operation on the contemporary Court. We find that dissents with certain characteristics are more effective than others on prompting the majority opinion to cite and discuss them. Specifically, majority opinions cite and discuss dissents that have a negative emotional tone; contain formal, logical, and hierarchical thinking; use adverbs; have a mixed ideological coalition; and cite a high number of Supreme Court precedents. These results suggest that strategic dissenters will have more in-house impact than others.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 2020 , pp. 27 - 50
Copyright
© 2020 by Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

We wish to thank Ryan Black, Rachael Hinkle, James Spriggs, and the anonymous reviewers.

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