The Burger Court and Economic Liberalism

This paper examines the much neglected subject of voting behavior on the Burger Court in economic cases. It applies bloc analysis and scaling to votes cast in economic cases during nine Terms of the Burger Court in order to assess whether there is sufficient coherence in judicial voting in economic cases to conclude that those votes comprise identifiable blocs or scales. The paper also attempts to describe the voting behavior of particular members of the Court and to ascertain the extent to which the same sorts of alignments that characterize the Court's membership in the disposition of civil liberties cases are present in economic decisions. Finally, the analysis suggests some of the factors which make examination of judicial voting behavior in economic cases rather more difficult than in civil liberties cases but which, however, make the enterprise particularly timely.