Ideological Patterns in the Justices' Voting in the Burger Court's Business Cases

Recent research has shown that economic liberalism no longer explains the Burger Court's business decisions. To discover what does, Hagle and Spaeth (1992) systematically analyzed the universe of Burger Court business decisions and found that a small set of ideological variables, which they labeled "instrumental libertarianism" accounted for most of these decisions. To supplement our 1992 study, we have constructed optimal models for the 10 most frequently participating Burger Court justices. These vary little from that of the Court. The three most antibusiness justices support governmental regulation, as do the two probusiness states' righters. Three justices are libertarians, one is a national supremacist, and one displays no distinctive behavior on any of our independent variables. In support of their regulatory preferences, the individual justices display varying support for agency action and judicial activism/restraint.