Abstract: The U.S. Supreme Court is a public policy battleground in which organized interests attempt to etch their economic, legal, and political preferences into law through the filing of amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs. In Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, Paul M. Collins, Jr. explores the influence of organized interests on the justices' decision making, including their votes in cases and their decisions to author concurrences and dissents. The author develops novel theories to explain how interest groups might shape judicial choice, building on intuitions derived from disciplines as diverse as law, marketing, political science, and social psychology. Utilizing rigorous empirical analyses, Collins provides unequivocal evidence that interest groups play a significant role in shaping the choices justices make, although not necessarily in a manner that is consistent with prevailing views of how the justices render their decisions. The result is a theoretically rich and empirically rigorous treatment of decision making on the nation's highest Court that informs our understanding of interest group litigation, as well as the legal and attitudinal models of judicial choice.

Keywords: law, amicus curiae, interest groups, Supreme Court, judicial decision making, attitudinal model, legal model, justices, political science, empirical legal studies