Jurisdiction‐Granting: Legislative Capacity and Ideological Distance

This paper examines the conditions under which Congress passes jurisdiction-granting legislation, legislation that expands the discretion of the federal district courts by designating them as venues in which policy questions are to be heard. This project extends existing research that has demonstrated that Congress manipulates the parameters of jurisdiction by examining the manner in which Congress routinely engages in this activity. I construct and evaluate a comprehensive dataset of laws in which Congress grants jurisdiction to the district courts for the period between 1949 and 2000 with the goal of explaining conditions under which Congress grants jurisdiction Two explanations are considered: higher levels of legislative capacity of Congress and the ideological distance between Congress, the district courts, administrative agencies. The results demonstrate that both legislative capacity and ideological distance are important to understanding the passage of jurisdiction-granting legislation

Are We Teaching them Anything?: A Model for Measuring Methodology Skills in the Political Science Major

While the literature emphasizes the importance of teaching political science students methods skills, there currently exists little guidance for how to assess student learning over the course of their time in the major. To address this gap, we develop a model set of assessment tools that may be adopted and adapted by political science departments to evaluate the effect of their own methods instruction. The model includes a syllabi analysis, evaluation of capstone (senior) papers, and a transcript analysis. We apply these assessment tools to our own department to examine whether students demonstrate a range of basic-to-advanced methodological skills. Our results support the conclusion that students at our institution are learning methodological skills, but that there is room for improvement. Additionally, the results support others’ conclusions regarding the importance of an integrative approach to methods instruction. For those in the discipline seeking to understand the effect of methods instruction on student performance, this model can be easily replicated to assess student learning

The Politics of Judicial Supremacy

The Supreme Court of the United States frequently makes claims of judicial supremacy. These are moments in which the Court claims that its interpretation of the Constitution is the final word, to the possible detriment of other nominally co-equal branches of government. One area of law in which claims of judicial supremacy have become more frequent relates to the doctrine of standing, or questions of whether individuals and groups are proper parties to bring a case. Starting in the 1980s, the Court began to more explicitly link standing to Article III, a process that can be described as constitutionalization. In this process, the Court works to insulate judicial doctrines from legislative and executive input, making it more difficult (but not impossible) for legislators and presidents to put forth their own visions of what the Constitution requires. Judicial claims of judicial supremacy may be taken at face value -- we can accept these claims, that is, without really questioning what makes such claims possible or successful. In contrast, this paper explores the politics of judicial supremacy, using data on Supreme Court standing decisions as well as an original dataset of Public Laws that confer standing (from 1946-2006). This paper reveals the give and take surrounding judicial claims of supremacy, and links such claims to underlying political and policy goals of justices