Judicial Partisanship and theSlaughterhouse Cases: Investigating the Relationship Between Courts and Parties

Abstract

Scholars of judicial behavior have persuasively demonstrated that parties profoundly influence the elaboration of judicial doctrine, but have paid more limited attention to understanding how courts can transform the content of party agendas. In this article, I argue that judges can work to deliberately define the issue positions adopted by the political parties with which they are affiliated. I contend that judges can, like other political actors, use the tools of their office to further explicitly partisan goals. Although they may employ traditional modes of legal reasoning, judges may nevertheless craft their decisions in ways that prioritize certain party principles over others, interpret the law in ways that knit together the beliefs of divergent factions within their party coalition, articulate principles to guide the party's incorporation of new issues, and, in some instances, begin to outline a coherent ideological vision for the party. I develop this theory through a close examination of theSlaughterhouse Cases, regularly cited as a core building block of the American constitutional canon.