THE HIDDEN FACES OF THE COURT On the Unobserved Conflicts among the Friends of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Abstract

The Supreme Court of the United States has during a long time held an important role in forming the application of American public policy. This study aims to answer the question of what ideological conflict dimensions is present in the context of interest groups attempting to influence the court using amicus curiae briefs. Also, it examines if the participation of interest groups is part of a pattern over several cases or rather isolated to individual issues. Although there exists earlier research concerned with the influence of interest groups on the Supreme Court, the ideological dimensions to their activities has been left unexplored. This study aims to remedy that shortcoming. The conflict of petitioner against respondent is used as an ideological benchmark, affiliations are distributed to the participating interest groups by categorization of their submitted briefs. The ideological dimensions of liberal and conservative, as well as a second dimension of libertarian and authoritarian is investigated. It is concluded that the interest groups submitting amicus curiae is primarily focused on the individual issues of the cases rather than their participation being part of a strategy to influence the court on a wider range of issues. However, among those interest groups participating in more than one case a conflict dimension of liberal and conservative is identified. The result of the study leads to the conclusion that further research with regards to the ideological dimensions of interest groups and the Supreme Court should primarily focus on the context of individual cases.