POL 335: The Supreme Court
Midterm Exam

Due in class, Monday, March 22.

Please answer 3 of the following 4 questions. Your typed response should be between 10 and 15 pages long. You may discuss the questions with your classmates, but your final answers should reflect your own thoughts. When quoting the texts, please provide precise references (page numbers). Do not fill up your answer with quotes from the texts, however. Answer the questions in your own words.

1) Lief Carter and Thomas Burke argue that the Florida Supreme Court produced a good opinion in Gore v. Harris and that the U.S. Supreme Court did not produce a good opinion in Bush v. Gore. Using the criteria that they set out in their text Reason in Law, do you agree with their assessment? Why or why not? The cases can be found in Appendix B, 169-175 and 176-181.

2) Baum notes that many Supreme Court justices have been "career politicians who achieved high elective office" but that currently, "only O'Connor comes close to fitting that pattern" (60). To what extent do you think the current lack of partisan political activity is significant for Carter and Burke's account of judicial reasoning and for Epstein and Knight's account of judicial strategy?

3) What is the significance of interest groups that attempt to influence the Court? Please answer this question with reference to all three of the books that we have read so far in this course.

4) Explain the basics of the "strategic account" of judicial decisionmaking that Epstein and Knight advance in Choices. To what extent, if any, do you think that this account, if true, would make it more difficult for justices to engage in practices of "good legal reasoning" as explained by Carter and Burke?