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American Politics Research
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Disagreement on the Rehnquist Court

The Dynamics of Supreme Court Concurrence

Lori Beth Way

Charles C. Turner

California State University, Chico

Scholarship on Supreme Court opinions has tended to focus on outcomes and majority opinions. This research examines the themes of justices' concurrences. The authors first ask what goals are repeatedly pursued in concurrences? The authors suggest that concurrences pursue at least one of the following activities: ground laying, weakening, signaling, or preserving. After establishing this typology of concurring behavior, the authors next ask, under what conditions do justices illustrate these behaviors? The authors code the 547 concurrences written by Rehnquist Court justices between the 1991 and 2001-2002 terms and hypothesize that a number of institutional and attitudinal variables may contribute to variation in concurring behavior. Applying logistic regression, the authors conclude that several factors, most notably citations to previous cases, the number of justices joining the concurrence, judicial ideology, workload, and the extent to which the author joins the majority opinion, are important predictors and correlates of the content of concurrences.

Key Words: Rehnquist Court • federal judiciary • judicial behavior • U.S. Supreme Court • concurring opinions • Supreme Court justices

American Politics Research, Vol. 34, No. 3, 293-318 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1532673X05281482
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