Its effective

Existing evidence suggests that Court curbing is an effective tool for Congress: the judiciary is much more willing to eschew judicial review when faced with formal threats from the legislature. However, until this point, no evidence speaks to the micro-level mechanics that underpin judicial responsiveness. Here, we detail two alternative models that can account for responsiveness. In a homogeneous responsiveness account, implicit in much of the literature, Court curbing leads to a uniform change in behavior, with each justice aware of threats from Congress and willing to moderate her behavior accordingly. In another, Court curbing leads to a conditional change that depends on the weight various justices place on other decision-making inputs.

The heterogeneous responsiveness insight leads us to posit that Court curbing is particularly impactful in shaping the behavior of the chief justice, whose administrative duties require regular interactions with Congress, and the swing justice, who as an ideological moderate is attentive to a variety of external signals, including threats from the legislature and opposition from the public. Our evidence shows support for our theory. We find that Court curbing influences these two justices, in particular, making both the chief justice and the swing justice much less likely than their colleagues to vote to strike down federal legislation. We also note that given the swing justice's willingness to weigh a variety of factors in decision-making, the effect of Court curbing is made more powerful for this justice when underscored by concerns about the Court's popular support. These effects are substantively meaningful; in some instances, they lead to nearly a two-thirds reduction in the likelihood of voting to strike legislation. Therefore, while Congress may be able to guarantee a deferential Court by shaping the behavior of the two justices that are most inclined to react to its threats, our findings also suggest a novel limit on inter-institutional responsiveness.

Our findings speak to multiple literatures. First, some scholarship considers the degree to which a justice's position on the Court shapes her propensity to behave in a strategic fashion (e.g., Enns and Wohlfarth 2013). The general takeaway from this work is that the swing justice, in particular, is inclined to behave strategically. However, this largely overlooks the important role played by the chief justice, whose administrative responsibilities have an influence when the Court is faced with legislative threats to its institutional authority. Our findings add to this literature by showing that, under certain conditions, the chief justice is similar to the swing justice - inclined to evince a higher degree of strategic responsiveness than his colleagues. More broadly, however, they show that different considerations govern the behavior of individual justices, including the chief and swing justices, when the Court faces external constraint. Second, scholarship on Court curbing and separation-of-powers struggles has made tremendous advances in recent years. A considerable literature now verifies that the judiciary is inclined to take prospective action when it faces threats from the legislature (e.g., Clark 2009; Harvey and Friedman 2006; Sala and Spriggs 2004; Segal, Westerland, and Lindquist 2011). These models have reshaped our understanding of Congress's power to change judicial behavior. But with few exceptions, this work focuses its attention on either institutional response or homogeneity in behavior across justices. This means that scholars have very little sense of which justices are most likely to react to congressional threats.