An Examination of Influencing Factors on Supreme Court Decision Making in Federal Agency Cases

Theories of Supreme Court decision-making attempt to characterize the Court’s behavior in one of three ways: 1) the Court is strictly political (the attitudinal model), 2) the Court is guided by precedent (the legal model), or 3) the Court takes strategic factors, including other institutions’ political preference, into consideration (the strategic model) when making decisions. These theories adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to explaining decision-making behavior. In this study, I posit that the type of case being examined affects which theory of decision-making is most accurate.

Here, I ask: which of the three dominant theories of Supreme Court decision-making explains the outcomes of federal agency cases (N = 888; years 1954-2017)? Using measures of the Court’s ideology; ideologies of the President, House, and Senate; the Solicitor General’s stated position; and legal factors (precedent and case legal complexity), I explore whether the Court considers these external institutions in its decisions, adapting its decisions to better align with their will. I also test the notion that the Court responds to external institutions more when they are ideologically aligned against the Court. My results indicate that the Solicitor General profoundly affects Supreme Court decisions, that the individual chambers of Congress influence the Court, and that legal factors guide the Court in its decision-making.

Overall, my findings suggest that the Court makes decisions within a broader context than just its own political preferences. In sum, the Court behaves strategically in federal agency cases with keen attention paid to relevant legal constraints, the most significant of which is precedent. From these findings, one call to action emerges. Political scientists studying the Supreme Court must consider the possibility that there is no “one size fits all” theory that explains decision-making. Rather, different theories explain different types of cases.