State Supreme Court Decision Making in Confession Cases

Abstract

The federal nature of the American judiciary suggests that a state court of last resort may evade decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court if those decisions do not comport with the preferences of the state supreme court judges or are in conflict with the prevailing ethos in the state. We offer a multiple principal agency model of state supreme court decision making. We posit that the decisions of state high courts are influenced by their judicial (the U.S. Supreme Court) and political (state elites or electorates) principals, as well as by more conventional factors. We test our theory by using a stratified random sample of state court of last resort decisions regarding challenged confessions from 1970 to 1991. Our analysis supports the hypothesized influence of federal courts on state supreme courts. That influence transcends most of the known determinants of decision making on the state supreme courts. We conclude that state supreme courts defer to their judicial principal but do not hesitate to use federalism to their advantage. In this area of the law, though, they do so without compromising Supreme Court precedent.