ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how political scientists and other sociolegal scholars study decision making on United States (US) appellate courts, and on the US Supreme Court. It discusses the historical development of the study of judicial decision making in political science, including the traditionalist era and the behavioral revolution. Instead of looking at institutional rules and structures, behavioralist political scientists began to examine political behavior at the individual level of analysis. The chapter explores several models of judicial decision making within the schools of thought, including legal, attitudinal, new institutionalist, and strategic models. The new institutionalist model explores how institutional cultures, structures, rules, and norms constrain the choices and actions of individuals when they serve in a political institution. The chapter also examines role theory, small group theory, principal agent theory, and regime politics theory. It discusses the Governance as Dialogue movement, which states that policy making and constitutional interpretation consist of a series of continuous inter-institutional conversations or dialogues.
