THE LIFE OF THE LAW - JUDICIAL POLITICS AND LEGAL CHANGE

To what extent is legal change influenced by judicial politics? This q uestion, as initially posed bg legal realists, provided the stimulus f or much of the early study of the judicial profess. Although judicial scholars have since explored the impact of judicial policy views, the litigation environment, and the political environment, no systematic a nalysis of the impact of these factors on legal change has been undert aken. I develop a measure of legal change and use it to test the impac t of judicial politics by examining search and seizure cases decided b y the Supreme Court between 1962 and 1989. Using a multinomial logit m odel, I find that several aspects of the judicial process, particularl y che Court's political composition, legal constraints, litigant resou rces, attorney experience, amicus support,and presidential preferences , affect the direction of legal change.