is dominated by literally hundreds of small decision making arenas and that there is an accepted orthodoxy in American political theory that favors both small constituency policymaking and private interests (Kahn, 1982).
As a political given, this system forms somewhat of a game in the federal, state, and local policy arenas. In fact, more often than not, "the distributional consequences of 'public policies' are the intended result of the private interests which have been instrumental in their design, passage, and implementation" (Navarro, 1984, ix). Thus, any semblance of true democratic behavior is absent since the term "public policy" should mean the presentation of issues for the general welfare of the entire group but usually focuses on the needs of the few, the powerful, or those with the type of influence needed to gain access to the Court.
Some have said that "to understand the Supreme Court is a task that forces lawyers to become philosophers, for the Constitution, as Woodrow Wilson said, is not a mere lawyers' document" (Miller, 1978, 3). The Supreme Court, whose task it is to interpret the Constitution as a living document, must therefore look at society as a whole when making decisions that will affect not only the current generation, but generations to come.
As interpreters of the law it is much more complicated to merge the Constitution with the changing question of legality within the system. Supreme Court justices must, by the very nature of their caseload, rely on adversarial litigators to inform them of the intricacies of cases. That is perhaps one of the ways that special interest groups are able to gain access to the Court (Baron, 1975). In this system, if a case is accepted by the Court for review, the participants must prepare arguments and are thus in a precarious position themselves to be influenced by certain pressure groups.
As an institution, then, the literature on the Court seems to have be...