Publication Date
2025
Presentation Length
15 minutes
College
College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
Department
Political Science, Department of
Student Level
Undergraduate
SPARK Category
Research
Faculty Advisor
Vaugn May
SPARK Session
Political Science
Presentation Type
Talk/Oral
Summary
The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) has led to a decrese in public trust for the institution. This piece looks at whether there has been an increase in ideologically conservative decisions on the High Court, as well as whether the role of institutional factors has gone down. The literature has previously held that institutional factors have a consistent hold on the Court and are some of the best predictors on how the Court will vote cases. However in recent years academics have been increasingly arguing that it based on partisanship and that the ideology of who appointed the justice is a better way of predicting how the judge will vote. They argue that because the most recently republican appointed justices being from the federalist society will mean that they will have more homogenous voting patterns. By looking at the Supreme Court Database I will analyze voting patterns of the Supreme Court between 2014-2024, which saw two presidencies of different partisan affiliation. By seeing the partisan voting patterns I can better understand how the recently appointed justices have shifted and see if they have contributed to the Supreme Court having a more republican shift. Finally I will see how the role of the Solicitor General has played into this by seeing how much the Supreme Court has continued to listen to the advice of them as they previously did. This is all important to see whether the Court has in fact gone more ideologically conservative and, perhaps more importantly, whether there are institutional factors that still constrain it.
Recommended Citation
Arnold, Nathan J., "Panic! At the Supreme Court" (2025). SPARK Symposium Presentations. 45.
https://repository.belmont.edu/spark_presentations/45
