Do Courts Respond to the Political Clout of Groups or to Their Superior Litigation Resources/“Repeat Player” Status?

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

This is the first attempt to classify factors that are raised in the scientific literature concerning factors related to litigation success by organizations. It develops a three-part typology, suggesting that litigation success has been linked to the litigation resources of litigants (including the fact that they are “repeat players”), the political clout of litigants, and more general organizational resources.It then proceeds to test the relative weight of these three factors by studying abortion cases decided by federal district courts from January 22, 1973, the date of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), to 1990. Specifically, the 126 organizational litigants involved in these cases completed surveys, which gathered information on all three factors. A general picture is that the federal courts were not responsive in post-Roe v. Wade abortion cases to the litigation-related resources of groups and even their repeat player status. Instead, court outcomes in abortion cases were linked to political factors, with civil liberties and Planned Parenthood groups receiving preferential decisions from the federal courts.In entering decisions that generally favored Planned Parenthood and civil liberties groups, the courts may have been responding to the well-established reputations of these litigants as guardians of individual rights or may have been reluctant to rule against these politically powerful groups.