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Presidential win rate project

Epstein & Posner · back to the audit

General 4 — Lee Epstein
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Lee Epstein
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Lee Epstein
Bio
Curriculum Vitae
Publications
Contact
Courses
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Bio
Curriculum Vitae
Publications
Contact
Courses
The End of Supreme Court Deference to the President? Lee Epstein Eric Posner (Covered in the New York Times, " Why Obama Struggled at Court, and Trump May Strain to Do Better ," January 23, 2017) •To assess presidential performance in the U.S. Supreme Court, we created a dataset of cases of concern to the President. The dataset covers Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt through Barack Obama (1932-2015 terms), which amounts to 84 Court terms and 13 Presidents. •Three findings emerge from the raw data. Presidents prevailed in nearly two-thirds of their cases; and captured over 60% of all votes cast. Obama’s win rate of just 50.5% is significantly lower than the average win rate and, in fact, the lowest in our dataset. A few commentators have noticed Obama’s problems in the Court, attributing them to Obama himself. But because our data show a downward secular trend in presidential success ever since the Reagan years, it may be that the Obama administration is just the latest victim of a Court that has gradually been losing confidence in the executive branch. Click here for the study (.pdf) Click here for the article in the New York Times
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