We develop a new approach to understanding which legal questions the Supreme Court chooses to address. We show that the Supreme Court is more likely to resolve ideologically polarizing legal questions. This result is based on a new technique for estimating the ideology of a doctrine, which we implement using a dataset of intercircuit splits. We use this technique to identify legal issues that are ideologically polarizing and show they are more likely to be addressed by the Supreme Court than less polarizing issues. Our results demonstrate how the Supreme Court uses certiorari to advance its ideological policymaking goals.

Legal challenges to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone have destabilized patients’ ability to access controversial medicines like medication abortion. We argue that federal courts’ receptiveness to this litigation undermines the coherence and integrity of prescription drug regulation in the U.S.

Do inferior courts play a meaningful role in interbranch disputes between the judicial and other branches? In interbranch conflicts involving the judiciary, lower courts move first and may shape the direction of conflict before high courts intervene directly. This paper explores how this organizational feature affects the judiciary’s ability and willingness to constrain other branches, developing a formal model of an interbranch dispute involving a hierarchical judicial branch. The model demonstrates multiple mechanisms through which lower court decisions may alter the outcomes of interbranch disputes and explores when lower courts will initiate conflict with the other branches.

How do ideological factors explain the citation patterns of federal courts? Current literature uses citation data in myriad ways but leaves open the question of how ideological factors may influence citation from each level of the judicial hierarchy differently. Combining original data on citations to Supreme Court opinions by district courts from 1969 to 2005 with existing data on citations by the courts of appeals and Supreme Court, I present a more complete portrait of the scope of a precedent across the federal judiciary. I find that ideological factors are associated with differences in citing behavior on the federal courts. Both the appellate and district courts are responsive to Supreme Court precedent, but district courts are not equally responsive to liberal and conservative updates to doctrine. Further, as the Supreme Court ideology changes from the time of setting precedent, appellate courts are less likely to cite the precedent, but district courts cite it more. These results suggest that the relationship between ideology and precedent adherence is complicated by the distinct institutional features of the Supreme Court, courts of appeals, and district courts.

Following the Roosevelt administration’s implementation of New Deal programs in the 1930s, the federal courts began to interpret the Constitution in a way that accommodated the rise of the “administrative state,” and bureaucratic policymaking continues to persist as a central feature of American government today. This essay submits, however, that the three pillars supporting the administrative state—the congressional delegation of Article I powers to the executive branch, the combination of powers within individual administrative entities, and the insulation of administrators from political control—might be reconsidered by the courts in the near future. After showing that the constitutionality of the administrative state has come under recent judicial scrutiny, the essay turns to the administrative law principle of deference, and argues that a reassessment of the Chevron doctrine seems imminent. Finally, the essay examines federal courts’ heavy use of “hard look” review as a means of curtailing agency discretion during recent administrations, and concludes that this judicial practice stands in uneasy tension with republican principles.