The Company They Keep

How Partisan Divisions Came to the Supreme Court

Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum

Explains, using social psychology, why Supreme Court Justices respond more to elite social networks with which they identify than to majority views in the general public
Explores why many Republican Justices in the late 20th century drifted to the left and why today's Republican Justices are firmly committed to the legal conservative agenda
Demonstrates how partisanship results in part from changes in the process of vetting Supreme Court nominees

The Company They Keep

How Partisan Divisions Came to the Supreme Court

Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum

Description

Are Supreme Court justices swayed by the political environment that surrounds them? The intuitive response of most is "yes," and most point to trends in electoral politics as well as the nature of the relationship between the three branches of government. It is not that simple, however.

As the eminent law and politics scholars Neal Devins and Larry Baum show in The Company They Keep, justices today are reacting to far more subtle social drivers than pressure from other branches of government or mass public opinion. In particular, by making use of social psychology, they examine why Justices are apt to follow the lead of the elite social networks that they are a part of. That is, the justices take cues primarily from the people who are closest to them and whose approval they care most about: political, social, and professional elites. The result is a court in which the justices' ideological stances reflect the dominant views in the appointing president's party. Devins and Baum argue that today's partisanship on the Court is also tied to the emergence of the conservative legal network-a social network that reinforces the conservative leanings of Republican appointees. For earlier Courts, elite social networks were not divided by political party or ideology, but for today's Court, elite social networks are largely bifurcated by partisan and ideological loyalties, and the Justices reflect that bifurcation.

A fascinating examination the factors that impact decision-making, The Company They Keep will reshape our understanding of the contemporary Supreme Court.

The Company They Keep

How Partisan Divisions Came to the Supreme Court

Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum

The Company They Keep

How Partisan Divisions Came to the Supreme Court

Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum

Author Information

Neal Devins, Professor of Law and Government, William and Mary, and Lawrence Baum, Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University

Neal Devins is Sandra Day O'Connor Professor of Law and Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of numerous book and articles discussing the intersection of law and politics, including The Democratic Constitution (Oxford 2015, 2nd edition) and articles in the Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Chicago, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and California law reviews. He has also written opinion pieces for Slate, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Lawrence Baum is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Ohio State University. He is the author of several books on judicial decision making and other topics, including Ideology in the Supreme Court (Princeton 2017), The Battle for the Court (Virginia 2017), and Judges and Their Audiences (Princeton 2017). He has published articles in journals in political science and law.

The Company They Keep

How Partisan Divisions Came to the Supreme Court

Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum

Reviews and Awards

"Preserving [the Supreme Court's] independence has grown far more difficult for reasons ably explored in Neal Devins and Lawrence Baums' The Company They Keep, a carefully argued and disturbing portrait of how partisan politics threaten to engulf the Court." - New York Review of Books

"Drawing on the methodologies of social psychology and political science, Professors Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum argue that the ideological stances of Supreme Court Justices are informed by a more subtle force than party loyalty or changing public norms... Rather than framing the judiciary as politicians in robes, Devins and Baum's analysis seeks to expose the Justices of the Supreme Court as something perhaps more sinister - that is, as humans seeking validation."

"The Company They Keep breaks from the literature on Supreme Court decision-making by describing judicial partisanship as a social phenomenon-a consequence, in part, of justices wanting approval from their elite peers. Devins, a law professor at William & Mary, and Baum, a political scientist at Ohio State, develop their argument by importing insights from social psychology. Devins and Baum put Supreme Court watchers on the right track by focusing on the justices not simply as individuals, but as members of teams that play in partisan political leagues The Company They Keep reminds us that today's Supreme Court justices, far from calling balls and strikes, are very much in the game. And they're playing to win." - Mark A. Graber, Washington Monthly

"This fascinating book draws not only on political science and legal scholarship but on social psychology to bring us important new insights into the behavior of the Supreme Court justices whose decisions shape our constitutional order." - Linda Greenhouse, Lecturer, Yale Law School

"The Company They Keep is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand today's Supreme Court. Drawing upon a wide range of material from political science and American history, Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum carefully explain how partisan polarization has come to the Supreme Court. Their discussions of networks of legal elites and of the Republican Partys somewhat more effective use of those networks are particularly illuminating." - Mark Tushnet, William

"In a fascinating new book titled The Company They Keep to be published early next year, two prominent students of judicial behavior, Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum, explore the Supreme Court's current polarization through the lens of social psychology...It's a fresh observation of an old phenomenon. - Linda Greenhouse, The New York Times"