Congressional Anticipation of Judicial Action. I evaluate the hypothesis that anticipation of negative treatment causes Congress to refrain from passing legislation in Chapters 3 and 4. In this section, I outline a standard theory of Congress–Court interactions, focusing on the congressional anticipation of xxxx- cial action, and review the hypotheses that will be evaluated in Chapters 3 and 4. I adopt two fundamental assumptions to characterize the relationship between Congress and the Supreme Court. First, members of Congress and the Supreme Court are strategic actors that are motivated primarily by their policy preferences. Second, members of Congress prefer to avoid seeing their policies reversed or modified by the Supreme Court. Legislative scholars accept that members of Congress engage in goal–seeking behav- ior (Xxxxxxx 0000, Xxxxxxx 0000, Xxxxxx 1974, Xxxxx & Xxxxxxxxx 1997). Xxxxxx (1974) introduced the model of members of Congress as single–minded seekers of reelection and argued that pursuit of the reelection goal leads members of Congress to emphasize position–taking, credit–claiming and advertising rather than policymaking.1 While mem- bers of Congress undoubtedly engage in these behaviors, they reveal little about the act of legislating and what non–distributive policies Congress will produce. Xxxxxx (1974, 141) acknowledges that “[I]f all members did nothing but pursue their electoral goals, Congress would decay or collapse.” According to his more recent work, nearly half of the public actions engaged in by members of Congress are related to the act of legislating (Xxxxxx 2000, 79). Even if the electoral goal is primary, members of Congress should behave as if they are motivated by policy goals. Many factors may shape policy preferences, including the in- strumental goals of satisfying constituents. Policy preferences, then, may not be personal but induced by external factors (Xxxxxxx 1973, Xxxxxx 2001). Moreover, the electoral goal does not preclude members of Congress from pursuing public policy. According to May- hew (2000, 14), members of Congress can choose what reelection constituency they will cater to, allowing them to simultaneously pursue electoral and policy goals. Because 1Members engage in position–taking when they publicly enunciate judgmental statements on subjects of interest to political actors (Xxxxxx 1974, 61). Credit–claiming involves the generation of a belief that a member of Congress is personally responsible for causing the government to do something. Credit– cla...
