Supreme Court justices complete large amounts of work in short periods of time, and they need attorneys’ help to get it done. Attorneys provide that help in merits briefs, where they offer preliminary legal research and potential outcomes for the justices to reach. But with great responsibility comes great power, and attorneys also use their briefs to see how far they can push their own agendas. That is, attorneys use their briefs to persuade and to plant ideas in the justices’ heads about where the law can go in the future. Using data from 2,396 cases presented between the 1984 and 2018 Supreme Court terms, this lecture walks through different ways attorneys use their briefs to persuade, investigate and push…and how successful they are at doing it.

Jessica Schoenherr is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Georgia. She received her doctoral degree from Michigan State University in 2020. Schoenherr’s research interests are in American political institutions and the federal court system — particularly the U.S. Supreme Court. She specifically addresses two different but related questions: (1) Who shapes the law? and (2) Who shapes perceptions of the judiciary and its shaping of the law? Some of her work is funded by a National Science Foundation grant, and different pieces have been published or accepted in outlets including the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics and the Journal of Law and Courts.

Schoenherr’s lecture is presented by the Arlin M. Adams Center for Law & Society, which annually invites legal scholars to campus to present on relevant legal topics.