Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-5lx2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-30T19:53:18.685Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Amicus Curiae Participation in U.S. Supreme Court Litigation: An Appraisal of Hakman's “Folklore”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Karen O'Connor  and
Lee Epstein
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1969 Nathan Hakman published a report of his investigation of the role of interest groups in Supreme Court litigation. He found that interest groups filed amicus curiae briefs in only 18.6 percent of the 1,175 “noncommercial” cases decided by the Supreme Court between 1928 and 1966. Participation as amicus curiae illustrates only one aspect of litigation activity, and at that one of the most limited, but Hakman took this as a reliable indicator that interest group activity in the courts was less frequent than was commonly supposed. Based on these findings, Hakman attacked the view that amicus participation was a form of political action. Such a view, he argued, was mere “scholarly folklore” (Hakman, 1969: 199).

Type
Research Note
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , 1982 , pp. 311 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 The Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank Allen McDonogh, three anonymous reviewers, and the editor, for their useful comments and criticisms.

References

References

BARKER, Lucius (1967) “Third Parties in Litigation: A Systematic View of Judicial Function,” 29 Journal of Politics 41.Google Scholar
BELTON, Robert (1978) “A Comparative Review of Public and Private Enforcement of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” 31 Vanderbilt Law Review 905.Google Scholar
BENTLEY, Arthur (1908) The Process of Government. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
BIRKBY, Robert H. and Walter F., MURPHY (1964) “Interest Group Conflict in the Judicial Arena,” 42 Texas Law Review 1018.Google Scholar
BURKE, Susan Olson (1980) “The Political Evolution of Interest Group Litigation,” Paper presented to the American Political Science Association; Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
CASPER, Jonathan D. (1972) Lawyers Before the Warren Court. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
CORTNER, Richard C. (1968) “Strategies and Tactics of Litigants in Constitutional Cases,” 17 Journal of Public Law 287.Google Scholar
COUNCIL FOR PUBLIC INTEREST LAW (1976) Balancing the Scales of Justice: Financing Public Interest Law in America. Washington, D.C: The Council for Public Interest Law.Google Scholar
COWAN, Ruth B. (1976) “Women's Rights Through Litigation: An Examination of the American Civil Liberties Union Women's Rights Project, 1971-1976,” 8 Columbia Human Rights Law Review 373.Google Scholar
EPSTEIN, Lee (1981) “The Impact of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.” Paper presented to the Midwest Political Science Association; Cincinnati, Ohio.Google Scholar
GALANTER, Marc (1974) “Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculation on the Limits of Legal Change,” 9 Law & Society Review 95.Google Scholar
GINGER, Ann Fagan (1963) “Litigation as a Form of Political Action,” 9 Wayne Law Review 458.Google Scholar
GOLDMAN, Sheldon and SARAT, Austin (eds.) (1978) American Court Systems. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.Google Scholar
GREENBERG, Jack (1974) “Litigation for Social Change: Methods, Limits and Role in Democracy,” 29 Record of the New York City Bar Association 9.Google Scholar
GREENBERG, Jack (1977) Judicial Process and Social Change: Constitutional Litigation. St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co.Google Scholar
GROSSMAN, Joel and TANENHAUS, Joseph (eds.) (1969) Frontiers of Judicial Research. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
HAHN, Jeanne (1973) “The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund: Its Judicial Strategy and Tactics,” in Wasby, Stephen L., American Government and Politics. New York: Charles Scribner.Google Scholar
HAKMAN, Nathan (1966) “Lobbying the Supreme Court—An Appraisal of the Political Science ‘Folklore.‘” 35 Fordham Law Review. 50.Google Scholar
HAKMAN, Nathan (1969) “The Supreme Court's Political Environment: The Processing of Noncommercial Litigation,” in Grossman, Joel and Tanenhaus, Joseph (eds.) Frontiers of Judicial Research. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
HANDLER, Joel (1978) Social Movements and the Legal System: A Theory of Law Reform and Social Change. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
HARPER, Fowler V. and Edwin D., ETHERINGTON (1953) “Lobbyists Before the Court,” 101 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1172.Google Scholar
KLUGER, Richard (1976) Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
KRISLOV, Samuel (1963) “The Amicus Curiae Brief: From Friendship to Advocacy,” 72 Yale Law Journal 694.Google Scholar
MANWARING, David (1962) Render Unto Caesar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
MELTSNER, Michael (1973) Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
MORGAN, Richard E. (1968) The Politics of Religious Conflict: Church and State in America. New York: Pegasus.Google Scholar
O'CONNOR, Karen (1980) Women's Organizations' Use of the Courts. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
ORREN, Karen (1976) “Standing to Sue: Interest Group Conflict in the Federal Courts,” 70 American Political Science Review 723.Google Scholar
PELTASON, Jack (1955) Federal Courts in the Political Process. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
PURO, Steven (1971) “The Role of Amicus Curiae in the United States Supreme Court: 1920-1966.” Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo.Google Scholar
RABIN, Robert L. (1976) “Lawyers for Social Change: Perspectives on Public Interest Law,” 28 Stanford Law Review 207.Google Scholar
SCHEINGOLD, Stuart A. (1974) The Politics of Rights: Lawyers, Public Policy, and Political Change. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
SCIGLIANO, Robert (1971) The Supreme Court and the Presidency. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
SORAUF, Frank J. (1976) The Wall of Separation: The Constitutional Politics of Church and State. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
TRUMAN, David (1951) The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
VOSE, Clement E. (1955) “NAACP Strategy in the Covenant Cases,” 6 Western Reserve Law Review 101.Google Scholar
VOSE, Clement E. (1958) “Litigation as a Form of Pressure Group Activity,” 319 The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 20.Google Scholar
VOSE, Clement E. (1959) Caucasians Only. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
VOSE, Clement E. (1972) Constitutional Change. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
WASBY, Stephen L. (1981) “Interest Group Litigation in An Age of Complexity.” Paper presented to the Midwest Political Science Association; Cincinnati, Ohio.Google Scholar
WOOD, Stephen B. (1968) Constitutional Politics in the Progressive Era: Child Labor and the Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
YALE LAW JOURNAL (1949) “Comment: Private Attorneys-General: Group Action in the Fight for Civil Liberties,” 58 Yale Law Journal 574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ZIEGLER, L. Harmon and G. Wayne, PEAK (1972) Interest Groups in American Society. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 1972.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 1978.Google Scholar