The Supreme Court sits at the top of the United States legal system, and despite its position, researchers do not possess a systematic way to assess the contemporaneous influence of law on judicial decision making. This is problematic, given research findings over the past two decades that reveal law does impact judicial decision making. In this dissertation I argue that bench memoranda provide a solution to this issue. I use Justice Harry Blackmun's bench memoranda, authored by his law clerks to provide an evaluation of each party's legal argument based on the information provided from merits and amicus curiae briefs to create a measure of case strength. This measure helps to distinguish the legal aspects of judicial decision making to determine which litigant has a stronger case. With this measure I demonstrate that Supreme Court justices can be constrained by law when it acts contrary to their policy preferences. I also show that an attorney's position that is more strongly supported by law can help overcome a poor oral argument performance. Additionally, I examine how law impacts other aspects of the decision making process, and show that justices' bargaining responses to the majority opinion are dependent on the how strongly the law supports the majority's position. Lastly, I demonstrate the richness of these bench memoranda data by showing that the quality of amicus briefs significantly impacts the likelihood of success for the position in which they advocate.
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