Title: Constitutional process : a social choice analysis of Supreme Court decision making /
Authors: Stearns, Maxwell L.
Publisher: University of Michigan Press,
Year: 2000
Subjects: United States.; Constitutional law United States Decision making.; Judicial process Social aspects United States.; Social choice United States.
Abstract: "Constitutional Process is the first analysis of how the collective nature of Supreme Court decision making affects the transformation of the justices' preferences into constitutional doctrine. Analyzing the Supreme Court from the perspective of social choice theory, Maxwell Stearns offers new insights with profound implications for understanding specific instances of doctrinal development within constitutional law that traditional analyses have proven ill equipped to explain."
Contents: pt. I. Framing the inquiry. Decisional and doctrinal anomalies in constitutional law. ; An introduction to social choice. -- pt. II. Social choice models of supreme court decision making. Static constitutional process : how individual cases are decided. ; Dynamic constitutional process : how groups of cases are decided. -- pt. III. Historical and case evidence. The Burger and Rehnquist Courts in historical context. ; Standing in the Burger and Rehnquist Courts: the cases. -- pt. IV. Summary and conclusion. Summary of argument. -- Notes. -- Bibliography. -- Indexes.