The Hierarchy of Justice: Testing a Principal-Agent Model of Supreme Court-Circuit Court Interactions

We examine Supreme Court-circuit court interactions from a principal-agent perspective, employing a fact pattern analysis to determine the extent to which circuit courts follow their own policy preferences versus the extent that they follow the policy dictates of the Supreme Court. We then examine whether monitoring by the Supreme Court can affect those interactions. We find that the courts of appeals are highly responsive to the changing search and seizure policies of the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, the strong independent effect of the ideologies of the judges gives evidence that judges do find opportunities to shirk to satisfy their own policy interests. We also find strong evidence that litigants play an active role in influencing monitoring by the Supreme Court.