Dissenting Blocs on the Warren Court: A Study in Judicial Role Behavior

Abstract

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to understand fully the work of the Supreme Court and similar appellate bodies without focusing on the crucial role of the individual justice. Supreme Court decisions are the products of the constant and forceful interaction of judicial minds and personalities, of precedents and traditions of the past and perceptions of the future, and of the conflicts and reinforcements which develop in its relationship to other political institutions. Justices are products of their environment, past and present, and it is a large part of their task to apply the values derived from these experiences to resolving cases before them. Contemporary students of the Court have articulated a number of techniques for studying the decision-making process. All are based on the assumption that the values and attitudes of individual justices are crucial determinants of decisional behavior, but each differs in its particular emphasis on the precise role which attitudes, values, or the backgrounds of the justices play in arriving at both individual and collegial determinations. In fact, the major disagreements among contemporary scholars seem to be over the relative importance of one or another component, rather than on the existence-or lackof these components.2