The Chief Justice, Experience, and Strategic Behavior on the Supreme Court

Abstract

We develop and test a theoretical account of the effect of management tenure on the strategic behavior of the Chief Justice of the United States. Substantial evidence from a variety of learning models and the public management literature indicates that tenure (length of service) is positively related to management performance in public organizations. This suggests that the chief justice’s tenure in office should be positively related to efficiency in the use of the chief justice’s formal powers. We assess this hypothesis by replicating and extending Johnson, Spriggs, and Wahlbeck’s (2005) study of Chief Justice Burger’s conference voting behavior. The data support our management tenure hypothesis, showing that Burger used greater discretion in reserving his conference vote over time as he became more adept at discriminating between circumstances when the tactic was strategically valuable and when it was not.