This paper addresses the contradictory results obtained by Segal (1997) and Spiller & Gely (1992) concerning the impact of institutional constraints on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision making. By adapting the Spiller & Gely maximum likelihood model to the Segal dataset, we find support for the...

This paper addresses the contradictory results obtained by Segal (1997) and Spiller & Gely (1992) concerning the impact of institutional constraints on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision making. By adapting the Spiller & Gely maximum likelihood model to the Segal dataset, we find support for the...

This paper links the theory of interest groups influence over the legislature with that of congressional control over the judiciary. The resulting framework reconciles the theoretical literature of lobbying with the negative available evidence on the impact of lobbying over legislative outcomes,...

This survey paper starts from the basic, and intuitive, assumption that judges are human and as such, can be modeled in the same fashion we model politicians, activists, managers: driven by well-defined preferences, behaving in a purposive and forward-looking fashion. We explore, then, the role...