of what they prefer to do, tempered by what they think they ought to do, but
constrained by what they perceive is feasible to do’’ (Gibson 1983 , 9 ). This pithy
summary still provides a useful means of organizing the literature on judicial
decision-making. What judges prefer to do is the central focus of the Attitudinal
Model, most closely associated with the research of JeVrey Segal and Harold
Spaeth. What judges ought to do is a concern of the Legal Model, and especially
of role theorists, while feasibility lies within the province of Strategic Models
(where I also locate the interactions between courts and their various constituents).
I begin my consideration of judicial decision-making with the Attitudinal Model.
2 Attitudes as Determinants of
Judges’ Decisions
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Without any doubt whatsoever, the most important theory of judicial decision-
making is that of Segal and Spaeth, and it is not hyperbole to assert that this work
has an extremely strong claim to being the most important contribution to our
understanding of courts and judges in the last two to three decades. 1 The Attitudinal
Modelbeginswiththe hypothesisthatSupremeCourtjusticesdecide‘‘disputesinlight
of the facts of the case vis-a`-vis [their] ideological attitudes and values’’ (Segal and
Spaeth 2002 , 86 ). Thus, the model is fairly simple: liberals decide cases liberally;
conservatives, conservatively. The model is slightly complicated by the reference to
case facts, but is still fairly simple: liberal judges see and weight facts in particular ways,
and their perceptions of facts cause them to make liberal decisions. Judges’ decisions,
according to this theory, reXect their ideological preferences, tempered by case facts.
In some respects, the Attitudinal Model is not a general model of judicial
decision-making; instead, it is closely tailored to the circumstances of the United
States Supreme Court. ‘‘Attitudinalists argue that because legal rules governing
decision-making (e.g. precedent, plain meaning) in the cases that come to the
Court do not limit discretion; because the justices need not respond to public
opinion, Congress, or the President; and because the Supreme Court is the court
of last resort, the justices, unlike their lower court colleagues, may freely
implement personal policy preferences’’ in their rulings (Segal and Spaeth 2002 ,
111 ). Presumably, in courts in which these characteristics do not apply, the
1 Although Segal and Spaeth have published widely in academic journals, their two books ( 1993 ,
2002 ) include most of the theory and much of the data on which the Attitudinal Model is based.
516 james l. gibson