Date of Award:
5-2023
Document Type:
Thesis
Degree Name:
Master of Arts (MA)
Department:
Political Science
Committee Chair(s)
Greg Goelzhauser
Committee
Greg Goelzhauser
Committee
William F. Shughart II
Committee
Damon Cann
Abstract
A presidential election is, arguably, the most important event in the American political system. The Congress and the president are undoubtedly affected by the pressures and publicity of these events, but we have little understanding of whether the Supreme Court behaves differently in presidential election years. In this paper, I argue that the Supreme Court will experience more consensus in its decisions and make less use of judicial review because of the potential for heightened public scrutiny that can arise during the term overlapping with a presidential election. I test this claim using ordinary least squares regression. I find that a presidential election has no significant effect across three measures of dissent and across a measure of the use of judicial review from the 1946 through 2020 terms. Overall, the Court seems well-insulated from the effects of a presidential election—at least as far as these measures indicate.
Checksum
0c1528921fa0b4b99363fae82c65457a
Recommended Citation
Hastings, Jeff, "The Supreme Court and Presidential Elections: An Analysis of Divisive Decisions and Judicial Review in Presidential Elections" (2023). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023. 8788.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/8788
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