Allie talks Courts

After game theory and workshops today I went to the bar with some people from the department, which was really nice, especially since the weather has been really awesome for the past few days.  However, I'm still really tired (it might have to do with my body waking me up an hour earlier than I had to and everything, wahhh) and I have to start my reaction paper to this book and I really don't want to.

I mean, I think I know the direction I want it to go; the book is arguing that the attitudinal model explains Supreme Court justices' behaviour, but this model pretty much says that they will only vote along ideological lines and that they have the power to do so.  I don't really agree with that?  I mean yes, on high profile cases and on civil liberties cases, they will vote along very specific lines, and on those issues there is a clear liberal bloc and a clear conservative bloc.  But this model flat-out ignores strategic voting as well.  For example - the court, in my opinion, take its legitimacy into account.

Marbury v. Madison was the first strategic ruling - of course Marshall wanted to rule against Jefferson, but he built a decision where, with giving Jefferson the ruling he favoured, he established judicial review, thus expanding the court's power.  Also, with the recent health care hearing - a lot of people thought Roberts was going to vote with the conservative bloc, and ended up voting in the other direction.  Clearly this was a strategic rather than sincere decision.  People were losing faith in the Court and started seeing them as partial and ideologically-driven.  Justices, however, want themselves and the Court to be seen as higher than that.  They want to keep people believing that they are impartial and everything.  If they ever need the public's backing against Congress or the President, they want to have it.

And then strategic voting also comes into play with the Court's relationship with the President and Congress. Since the Court has no enforcement mechanism, they do, unlike what the model argues, need to think about how the other branches will react to their ruling.  So they may play around with decisions depending on their relationship with them.

They might also rule against their ideology in one case so they can later rule in a way they desire on an issue that is more important to them.  Again, this goes back to not wanting to be seen as too ideological (despite that they definitely do have preferences).

So I want to take this sort of direction (aha sorry, I definitely didn't mean to go into it all here.  I just started and couldn't stop) in my paper, and I was able to talk with one of the second years who specializes in courts and that really helped with a lot of this.

I just wish I was in the mood to work, because I'm really not.  I'm just really tired and don't want to do much of anything.  I'm actually thinking about napping for an hour or so because I'm so exhausted.  Meh.  I might.  It might be a good idea.  Give up an hour now so I could be more productive later.  Might be worth it.