POLICY PREFERENCES OF JUSTICES AND PRESIDENTS

Abstract

Focusing on the issue of civil rights, this study examines the relationship between policy preferences of presidents and the votes of the Supreme Court justices they appointed. Through content analysis of presidential statements, relatively systematic measures of civil rights policy views for five recent presidents were obtained and compared with the voting records on civil rights of justices they appointed to the Supreme Court. The findings suggest that although a correspondence exists between presidential preferences and judicial votes, presidents have been only moderately successful in appointing justices whose votes reflect presidential preferences.