An econometric analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court's certiorari decisions

This paper presents a model of the Supreme Court's certiorari behavior. The analysis assumes that the Court accepts or rejects a case according to the individual justice's perceptions of how deciding the case will affect the law. The model generates two testable hypotheses. First, there is a positive relationship, ceteris paribus, between voting to grant certiorari and voting with the majority on the final decision. This hypothesis is somewhat similar to Brenner's and diametrically opposed to Provine's. Second, there is a positive relationship, ceteris paribus, between voting to grant certiorari and voting to reverse the lower court's decision. This hypothesis is similar to those developed by Ulmer, Baum, Brenner, and Provine although their underlying models are quite different. Both the hypotheses presented in this paper are supported by a maximum-likelihood logistic analysis of 512 cases decided by the Court between 1947 and 1956. Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1982