Lobbying Justice: Exploring the Influence of Interest Groups in State High Courts

Abstract

Despite well documented evidence that both the level and diversity of amicus participation in state high courts have been growing, we know little about whether or under what conditions amicus briefs have an impact on court outcomes. This dissertation investigates how interest groups attempt to influence state supreme courts through their participation as amicus curiae. Using an original dataset assembled from content analysis of more than 2300 state supreme court decisions handed down between 1995 and 2010 and spanning three distinct areas of law - products liability, environmental law, and free speech/expression - I find that amicus briefs submitted by interest groups have the most influence over judicial outcomes in areas of law where interest groups routinely make large-scale donations to judicial campaigns. These results raise serious concerns about the influence of big money in judicial elections. The second part of this dissertation tests two competing theories of amicus influence to determine how state high court judges utilize amicus brief information in judicial decision making. The informational theory assumes the influence of amicus brief information to be evenly distributed across judges. However, theories of confirmation bias and motivated reasoning suggest that the information in amicus briefs may be received and evaluated differently depending upon the ideological predispositions of individual judges. Using multi-level modeling, I analyze the votes of more than 12,000 individual state high court judges to determine whether judge ideology conditions the influence of amicus briefs such that judges are more receptive to pro-attitudinal information contained in briefs from interest groups that share their predispositions. Results suggest that method of judicial retention and area of case law structures the mechanism of amicus brief influence. Amicus briefs appear to play an informational role in complex areas of case law but the presence of competitive judicial elections appear to alter the mechanism of amicus brief influence such that judicial responsiveness to amicus briefs is more closely tied to the reelection and campaign fundraising considerations of individual judges. The final portion of this dissertation investigates the case-level and court-level factors that attract interest group participation as amicus curiae in state high courts in order to better our understanding of interest group strategies when engaging state judiciaries. This paper tests the hypothesis that groups strategically target cases that will best serve the policy and institutional interests of the group, while focusing group resources on cases and courts where they are most likely to be successful. Results indicate that both liberal and conservative groups target state high courts that are elected through competitive and retention election processes rather than those that are appointed, suggesting that interest groups believe their influence will be greater with judges who are accountable to the public. Results also show that both liberal and conservative groups target courts from states that are ideologically sympathetic, but not necessarily from courts that are ideologically similar.