Determinants of Citations to Supreme Court Opinions (And the Remarkable Influence of Justice Scalia)

This research considers the citations to Supreme Court opinions issued over a ten year period of the Rehnquist Court. It traces the citations to those opinions received over the ten years following their issuance, broken down into total citations, significant positive citations, and negative citations. Nearly all categories of citations were positively associated, suggesting that certain features influence all types of citations at all court levels, though Supreme Court negative citations appeared to diminish the overall influence of opinions. The type of case was an important determinant of the citations received, especially by lower courts, where civil rights and other types of decisions received more citation. The vote margin in the case was not a significant predictor of citations, but conservative opinions consistently received more citations than liberal opinions, during this era. Opinion author proved significant, and the most dramatic findings were the much higher citation rates associated with Justice Scalia’s opinions for the Court, including negative citations. This finding survived controls for case type and ideological direction and suggests that some feature of Scalia’s opinions makes them especially powerful precedents.