Incentives in the Supreme Court

Abstract

... That in itself would change the pool of prospective nominees, as some of those who would accept the job with the associated celebrity would find the overall compensation less attractive than the alternatives available to them. ... The Effects of Anonymous Opinions Professors Lerner and Lund's proposal that the Supreme Court issue anonymous opinions with unsigned separate opinions reinforces the image of Justices as bureaucrats. ... The variants are: unsigned opinions with no dissents allowed and unsigned opinions with signed dissents and concurrences. ... The European Court of Justice ("ECJ"), which apparently operates under the norm of consensus, has been criticized for issuing opinions that are terse and unilluminating. ... These effects might be avoided by developing a going-along norm within the Court, but the reforms Professors Lerner and Lund propose provide no reason to think that such a norm would arise. ... Considering the incentives that politicians have for adopting good-government reforms shows the difficulty of instituting reforms that would address this broader set of concerns. ... Seen as good-government proposals, Professors Lerner and Lund's reforms are not yet part of a larger package of reforms that might itself form the core of a partisan agenda.