If there is any example of a Kuhnian paradigm in political science, it would be the attitudinal model in Supreme Court decision making. Over a half century ago, C. Herman Pritchett boldly showed data that revealed “political” decision making by the justices of the nation's high court. Harold Spaeth was among the pioneers in this research and is now regarded as its strongest adherent. The justification for the Supreme Court Attitudinal Model, known to friends and foes alike by the acronym “SCAM,” is relatively simple: The preponderance of individual-level decision making can be explained as a function of the attitudes of the justices. Like the ideal model, it is parsimonious and explains a great deal of variance. Even those who have been critical of SCAM concede that the attitudes of the justices are the most important determinant of individual-level decision making at the Supreme Court level.

This book is a far-ranging examination of the American legal system, ostensibly concentrating on the Supreme Court. It relies heavily on the multifaceted and voluminous research of the three authors and includes new findings. It is designed to be a less methodologically sophisticated analysis and succeeds in achieving that goal. The book combines an historical and analytical perspective that will be a welcome addition for those who teach judicial process, for those outside the academy who want a systematic analysis of the Court, and for prelaw students who want to understand civil procedure. The discussion of the relationships between state and federal courts and jurisdiction is especially strong.

The book is engaging and very well written, even the chapter on civil procedure, which the authors apologize for in a footnote. No one is spared their strong opinions or rapier wit. Proponents of the legal model are criticized because their models are not systematic, cannot be verified empirically, or permit scholars to argue that the model holds, no matter what the results of the case. Congress is referred to as “probably the least efficient and ineffective legislature of any modern nation, one that arguably personifies the concept of kakistocracy (government by the worst)” (p. 37). In Bush v. Gore, “the ipsedixitist majority behaved with unconscionable temerity” (p. 307), and “it was a decision that in its unparalleled cynicism surpasses the most disgusting in its history: Dred Scott v. Sandford ” (p. 308). The authors maintain that prediction requires no particular insight for “the analyst who realizes that justices are wedded to their individual policy preferences—and not nanocerebral nonentities slavishly adhering to the diaphanous fabric of ethereal legal principles and doctrine” (p. 323). They do not even spare each other.

Despite its obvious strengths, though, this will be a book in search of a market. The problems arise from three sources: the authors, the editor, and the reader. In The Attitudinal Model Revisited, Jeffrey Segal and Spaeth confronted proponents of the strategic model. This was the latest in a long-standing dialectic. For the past decade, Segal and Spaeth have been under attack by proponents of the legal model, neoinstitutionalists, and those who subscribe to strategic models of decision making. Indeed, the critiques and responses have become a virtual cottage industry on display at national and regional conferences and through an ever-growing literature. Thus, when I received the book, I was expecting the latest version of the “Empire Strikes Back.” For the first two chapters, this seemed to be the case. But then the book suddenly changes without warning into an historical analysis of the Supreme Court and an analysis of civil and criminal procedure, then moves through the state and lower federal courts, with the role of the Supreme Court fading as one goes through the chapters. Ultimately, the authors return to the Supreme Court and the attitudinal model. The chapter on the history is a good reflection of this problem. The discussion of the Taney Court includes an interesting application of the attitudinal model to the justices on that Court. But that type of analysis is not continued throughout the remainder of the chapter.

One of the major shortcomings of the debate concerning judicial decision making lies in the disconnection between individual and institutional levels of analysis. The attitudinal model relies on individual-level analysis, while many of the legal models are institutional. The book examines the institutional level to a degree, but there is not a direct examination of the disconnection. The authors conclude that justices are rarely influenced by stare decisis, while they concede on the institutional level that the Court seldom overturns precedent. The test of attention to precedent returns to the individual level. There is almost no mention of the numbers and percentage of unanimous cases (declining, to be sure), but still evidence of exceptions to the attitudinal model.

As a reader, I find it unfair to hold the authors to a different standard than they intended, but the book does not hang together that well (the use throughout of Bush v. Gore, notwithstanding). That is sometimes the consequence of a jointly authored work, but it is magnified here. The separate chapters and sections appear to have been written independently with little attention to molding them into a cohesive unit. Consequently, there is redundancy and little in the way of common themes linking the analyses together. An editor should have been cognizant of this problem. The first clue of this problem was the paragraph that greets the reader before the title page. It explains the use of the word “in” in the title of the book. It appears to be a way of trying to explain why the book covers the waterfront of the legal system though it is ostensibly about the Supreme Court. The material on the lower courts and civil procedure is strong, but not well integrated with the rest of the book. This problem, in particular, would make it difficult to use it as a text or a supplement in an undergraduate judicial process class. The editing also failed in a number of places, for example, where Douglas Ginsburg is identified as Daniel Ginsburg, or where a case that was only mentioned in a footnote a few pages earlier was referenced in the text by part of its name. In the end, despite the obvious strengths of the book, I suspect instructors will opt for a more nuanced treatment of judicial decision making.