Books

"It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly."

— C. J. Cherryh

What Justices Want: Goals and Personality on the U.S. Supreme Court

(Cambridge University Press, 2018)

The most sophisticated theories of judicial behavior depict judges as rational actors who strategically pursue multiple goals when making decisions. However, these accounts tend to disregard the possibility that judges have heterogeneous goal preferences - that is, that different judges want different things. Integrating insights from personality psychology and economics, this book proposes a new theory of judicial behavior in which judges strategically pursue multiple goals, but their personality traits determine the relative importance of those goals. This theory is tested by analyzing the behavior of justices who served on the US Supreme Court between 1946 and 2015. Using recent advances in text-based personality measurement, Hall evaluates the influence of the 'big five' personality traits on the justices' behavior during each stage of the Court's decision-making process. What Justices Want shows that personality traits directly affect the justices' choices and moderate the influence of goal-related situational factors on justices' behavior.

Reviews:

  • 'Professor Hall has produced a fascinating study of Supreme Court justices' personality traits that opens a new window on their decision-making. Using a sophisticated machine-learning model to assess the justices' written opinions, Hall identifies specific personality types and characteristics that ring true in many instances based on our own anecdotal experiences observing the Court. By blending psychological analysis with our current knowledge of judicial attitudes, Professor Hall's work makes a uniquely interesting and creative contribution to the literature.' --Stefanie A. Lindquist, Arizona State University

  • 'Using innovative data and appropriate methods to demonstrate the role personality plays in structuring judicial behavior, Hall does so much more than pose a challenge to existing accounts. He takes nothing short of a quantum leap in the quest to develop a deeper and more realistic conception of judging.' --Lee Epstein, Washington University, St Louis

  • 'Professor Hall makes a solid contribution to our knowledge. It links a leading theory in psychology to virtually every type of decision that has been modeled by quantitative research on the Supreme Court. It addresses an interesting and important topic and is methodologically sophisticated. Written in an engaging fashion, What Justices Want will be an important and lasting study.' --Kevin T. McGuire, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill


The Nature of Supreme Court Power

(Cambridge University Press, 2011)

Few institutions in the world are credited with initiating and confounding political change on the scale of the United States Supreme Court. The Court is uniquely positioned to enhance or inhibit political reform, enshrine or dismantle social inequalities, and expand or suppress individual rights. Yet despite claims of victory from judicial activists and complaints of undemocratic lawmaking from the Court's critics, numerous studies of the Court assert that it wields little real power. This book examines the nature of Supreme Court power by identifying conditions under which the Court is successful at altering the behavior of state and private actors. Employing a series of longitudinal studies that use quantitative measures of behavior outcomes across a wide range of issue areas, it develops and supports a new theory of Supreme Court power. Matthew E. K. Hall finds that the Court tends to exercise power successfully when lower courts can directly implement its rulings; however, when the Court must rely on non-court actors to implement its decisions, its success depends on the popularity of those decisions. Overall, this theory depicts the Court as a powerful institution, capable of exerting significant influence over social change.

Reviews:

  • "Matthew Hall's The Nature of Supreme Court Power is must reading for scholars and students interested in the impact of Supreme Court decisions and American politics generally. By carefully focusing attention on behavior in society a decision could be expected to change, Hall articulates vertical and lateral contingencies that condition the Court's influence, and alerts us to the important role of an issue's public popularity. He makes a convincing case for when we should and should not find Supreme Court influence, and backs this up with careful empirical support. His findings that the Court is not all-powerful but strikingly powerful under certain conditions will figure prominently in the important debate about the power of that institution." --Paul Brace, Rice University

  • "This is the best treatment of the nature of Supreme Court power since Gerald Rosenberg's The Hollow Hope, and it paints a very different picture. Hall's elegant argument is likely to unsettle a number of widespread scholarly assumptions about the Court." --Thomas M. Keck, Syracuse University

  • "The Nature of Supreme Court Power is one of the most important contributions to our understanding of the power of courts in the last three decades. Hall convincingly argues that judicial power to affect the behavior of state and private actors depends on more than the law itself. His careful analysis demonstrates the importance of institutional context and popular sentiment as well as lower court's capacity to implement decisions. This terrific book will be of interest to seasoned scholars and court watchers interested in the interplay of law and politics." --Laura Beth Nielsen, Northwestern University

  • "In this engaging book, Hall challenges much conventional wisdom about the limits of judicial power. Ranging widely over controversial Supreme Court decisions of the last 50 years, Hall's argument may give pause to judicial power skeptics. Well-researched and clearly argued, The Nature of Supreme Court Power deserves to be widely read and taught." --Gerald N. Rosenberg, University of Chicago

  • "Matthew Hall's The Nature of the Supreme Court Power is a significant contribution... Hall writes in a craftsman-like fashion producing a highly readable volume... The book stimulates a wide variety of unanswered substantive and theoretical questions and will undoubtedly encourage additional research efforts." --Thomas G. Walker, Emory University