Who Speaks for the Court? Majority Opinion Assignment from Taft to Burger

The designation of the majority opinion writer is one of the major prerogatives of the Chief Justiceship for influencing the formulation of judicial policy. The limited research on opinion assignment has focused almost exclusively on the ideological aspects of assignment decisions. Data sets employed have been small and noncomparable. This paper empirically examines several concerns operating in opinion assignment decision making in addition to ideology. These include the equality principle, distribution of important cases, self-assignment patterns, and judicial experience. The data base consists of the universe of over a half a century of opinion assignments made by Chief Justices Taft through Burger.