The Supreme Court and the American Legal System

This book examines the American legal system , including a comprehensive treatment of the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite this treatment, the 'in' from the title deserves emphasis, for we extensively examine lower courts, providing separate chapters on state courts, the U.S. District Courts, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals. The book analyzes these courts from a legal/extralegal framework, drawing different conclusions about the relative influence of each based on institutional structures and empirical evidence.

The book is also tied together through its attention to the relationship between lower courts and the Supreme Court. Additionally, Election 2000 litigation provides a common substantive topic linking many of the chapters. Finally, we provide extended coverage to the legal process, with separate chapters on civil procedure, evidence, and criminal procedure. While this volume provides original research, we present such research at a level that does not require methodological sophistication. Furthermore, we provide all data used for our original research, and all commands to run the analyses, on the book's web site.