Administrative Agencies and the Court: a Reexamination of the Impact of Agency Type On Decisional Outcomes

Abstract

is thoroughly documented in the literature. Over the past forty years there have been several studies that have demonstrated the high levels of success enjoyed by the agencies, with most of the literature reporting a success rate of about 70 percent for federal agencies (Pritchett 1948; Tanenhaus 1960; Canon and Giles 1972; Handberg 1979; Crowley 1987). Although federal agencies are successful as an aggregate group, researchers in the past have found that there is differentiation among the agencies in their rates of support by the Court. Some scholars have suggested that the different levels of support could be due to differences in the interests associated with the agencies (Handberg 1979; Crowley 1987). This has led to the creation of typologies that have usually been based on some variation of an economic/social dichotomy. It is argued that economic agencies seldom incite the ideological passions that are generally associated with social agencies (Ripley and Franklin 1984). The same ideological conflicts that we find in the legislatures could arise in the Court when it deals with cases involving social regulation (Crowley 1987). The impact of litigant characteristics on Supreme Court decisionmaking has been demonstrated for other types of parties such as black litigants (Ulmer and Thomson, 1981) and women (O'Connor and Epstein 1983). There is evidence that the type of party filing an amicus belief has a significant impact on the decision to grant plenary review (O'Connor and Epstein 1983; Caldeira and Wright 1988; Ulmer 1978). Moreover, Segal (1988) found that litigants supported by the solicitor general with amicus briefs are more likely to win than not. Similarly, there is a considerable amount of research indicating the effectiveness of the solicitor general as a direct party before the Court (Segal 1988; Segal and Reedy 1988; Ulmer and Willison 1985). It seems clear that the type of party involved in the case can have a significant impact on the Court's decisional outcomes.