The Influence of Justices on U.S. Supreme Court Precedent

Judicial impact studies frequently consider the influence of Supreme Court decisions on future decision-making behavior. However, a critical void in the literature is analysis of the influence of individual Supreme Court justices on future decision making behavior. We investigate whether there are inherent differences between the opinions of individual justices and whether these opinions differentially impact future Supreme Court decisions. That is, we examine whether certain justices receive higher levels of citations and positive treatments in future Supreme Court decisions. To test our predictions we analyze majority opinions from the longest natural Court era of the U.S. Supreme Court between 1994 and 2005. The empirical results support our account and demonstrate that differences between the opinions of individual justices disparately impact the extent to which the Court cites and follows the opinions authored by each justice in its future decisions. Our analysis suggest that in addition to the voting coalition that decides the case outcome, which of the justices ultimately author the majority opinion has a profound impact on future citation and adherence to the Court’s precedent.