The threat of non-implementation and the behavior of the supreme court: empirical and normative assessments of voting behavior and majority opinion construction

A growing literature on the separation of powers focuses on the Supreme Courts anticipation of implementation problems in a subset of cases called lateral, those that require executive action to take effect. This topic still lacks a justice-centered analysis, use of ideological distance as an explanatory variable, and focus on the discretion that the justices have to vote their sincere preferences, in addition to merits outcomes. The construction of majority opinions has been the subject of scientific inquiry, but not yet in situations in which the Court fears that its cases may not be implemented faithfully. Finally, the subject of judicial behavior in lateral cases lacks a full theoretical structure explaining the relationship between the Court and the President. This project supplements the literature on this important topic by developing and testing competing theories of judicial behavior in lateral cases.