Department of Political Science

The solicitor general is widely believed to occupy a special status among the parties appearing in the U.S. Supreme Court. A broad array of theoretical advantages are thought to contribute to the federal government's influence, but scholars have no direct evidence of their impact. More importantly, virtually all existing research has failed to measure directly the influence of those advantages across other parties, as well. Estimating a series of probit models of executive success in the Court under both Democratic and Republican administrations, I test the impact of one such advantage, litigation experience, measured for all parties across all cases. The results suggest that, notwithstanding the conventional wisdom, there is nothing distinctive about the solicitor general's influence. Thus, existing explanations regarding the solicitor general's institutional prestige appear to overstate the importance of the executive's role in the Court.

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