The Rehnquist Court: Revisiting Pritchett Bloc Analysis and Guttman Scaling

Judicial voting behavior has been a primary focal point in American political analysis since the 1940's. Civil rights, the development of the legal philosophy of affirmative action, abortion rights, and separation of church and state have been major issues in recent legal history. The U.S. Supreme Court has been a primary player in each of these issues. The decisions that have came down from the high court have affected the social make-up of the country and have indeed affected the lives of every American. The Supreme Court's expanding power and its ability to promote social change have made the voting behavior of its justices a very significant topic for analysis.This Chancellor's Scholar Thesis will begin the process of analyzing the voting behavior of each justice on the current U.S. Supreme Court in civil rights cases. The focus of this study will be the voting tendencies (ideological direction) of each justice on these cases. The cumulative information gathered in this study will be used to predict the probably ideological direction of the Supreme Court in the area of civil rights as well as predicting the probable future of civil rights cases under the leadership of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Research methods pioneered and tested by C. Herman Pritchett and Louis Guttman will be used to accomplish these tasks. The hypothesis of this paper is that the research should show a trend toward a conservative ideology and a more restrictive interpretation of civil rights laws in the immediate future of the U.S. Supreme Court