Supreme Court Impact On Compliance and Outcomes: Miranda and New York Times in the United States Courts of Appeals

Abstract

series of studies in the past two decades, usually referred to as studies, have vitiated the traditional assumption that lower courts automatically adopt and diffuse the constitutional interpretations announced by the Supreme Court. In fact, several scholars have concluded that these judicial impact studies suggest that constitutional rules as announced by the Supreme Court, often have little influence on the behavior of judges and other officials in the legal system (Baum 1978: 208; Wasby 1973: 1086). But there is reason to doubt that the judicial impact literature presents an accurate appraisal of the overall significance of Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution for lower courts. Extant empirical research deals primarily with a highly biased sample of controversial civil liberties decisions, especially those of the Warren Court (Baum 1978). In effect, the studies to date may have been biased because they are limited to the small portion of the court's output for which the chances for significant impact were the smallest. Moreover, most research on judicial impact has examined the response of state courts because that is where scholars expected to find noncompliance. Much less attention has been given to the impact of the Supreme Court on the lower federal courts (Gruhl 1980: 504). This suggests that one should expect to find greater impact if federal court decisions, especially those dealing with economic issues or even less highly charged civil liberties decisions (e.g., libel cases) are examined. Baum (1978) also suggests that the impact of the Supreme Court should increase as the clarity of its opinions increase and should be greatest for courts which are most directly under the authority of the Supreme Court. Moreover, since reversal is a significant sanction for lower court judges, the probability of reversal may be expected to enhance impact. While all of Baum's observations on factors which are likely to affect impact appear plausible, none has received adequate empirical examination. Impact studies have also been handicapped by excessive attention to the relatively narrow and artificially dichotomous concept of compliance. Much of the literature on the impact of the Supreme Court on lower courts has dealt