ABSTRACT
This chapter begins at the inception of political science analyses of the Supreme Court. It offers a brief discussion of 'legalism' and its flipside, the legal realism movement. The chapter introduces the seminal work of C. Herman Pritchett, who paved the way for political scientists to study the Supreme Court systematically and eventually to lay claim to empirical Supreme Court scholarship. It discusses the two main models scholars have used over the last few decades to explain Supreme Court behavior: the attitudinal model and the strategic model. Legalism is the belief that judges objectively apply accepted legal principles to disputes. Legal realism argued against the idealized concept that judges mechanically applied fundamental legal rules to resolve disputes. The ultimate expression of the attitudinal model is found in the work of Jeffrey A. Segal and Harold Spaeth. A judge's cognitive style is likely to influence his or her judicial behavior. [P]ersonality variables may make our models of judicial behavior vastly more complex.
