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Department of Political Science

Talia and Aba

Ehud (Udi) Sommer

Department of Political Science
Social and Behavioral Sciences Bldg.
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, N.Y. 11794-4392
(631) 632-4109 (office)
(646) 275-4167 (cellular)
usommer@ic.sunysb.edu







I am a Ph.D. candidate at the political science department at Stony Brook University and will receive my Ph.D. in June 2007. My dissertation committee consists of Jeffrey Segal (chair), Stanley Feldman, Scott Basinger and Jeffrey Lax (Columbia).

I study political institutions with a focus on the American system. My major interest concerns the US Supreme Court. In my research I often benefit from my rich background in political methodology. I am interested in making the right connections between theory and appropriate statistical frameworks in order to explore substantive research questions. In my dissertation I am concerned with an early yet consequential stage in the Court's decision making - the certiorari vote. I probe to what extent, other than legal criteria they consider, justices are also strategic when setting their agenda, particularly with respect to the likelihood of their influence on the opinion. I am also interested in juxtaposing the nature of decisions justices render when voting on merits, and when crafting the opinion (I study differences in governing institutions, collective action problems, and goals - see my APSA 2006 paper). In addition, I strongly believe in a 'comparative advantage' (see my SPSA 2006 and SPSA 2007 papers). Finally, beyond my public law interests, I also produce research on broader topics and extend my work to other institutions (see my MPSA 2006 paper).

Aside from research, I have a rich teaching experience at the PhD, MA and undergraduate levels. This year teaching evaluation survey averages ranged from 1.25 to 1.9 on a scale of 1 (best) to 7 (worst).

CV [ .pdf ]


Dissertation (a synopsis)


Papers (working papers and conference papers)


Teaching experience (Ph.D., M.A., and Undergraduate levels)


Data


Poetry and short stories (published as well as recently written)


Pictures of (and for) family and friends


Links


Curriculum Vitae - Ehud (Udi) N. Sommer


Last modified - September 2006
Department of Political Science
N741 Social and Behavioral Sciences Bldg.
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Stony Brook, New York 11794-4392
(631) 632-4109

Education

PhD student, Department of Political Science, SUNY at Stony Brook, 2003-07
     (Examination Fields: Political Economy, American Politics, Methodology)
MA in Clinical Psychology, Magna Cum Laude, Tel Aviv University, Dec. 2002
Graduate of the Amirim Program for Outstanding Students, Hebrew University, July 1999
BA in Psychology, Magna Cum Laude, Hebrew University, July 1999

Research Interests

Judicial Politics, American Politics, Political Methodology, Political Economy, Comparative Judicial Systems, Constitutional Law.

Working Papers

Scholarships, Honors and Awards

  • Fulbright Grant for Doctoral Students, 2003-05
  • Stony Brook Foundation, Summer Research Grant, 2004
  • Fulbright Professional Enhancement Grant, 2004
  • Full tuition scholarship for graduate students, SUNY at Stony Brook, 2003-07
  • Financial aid Fellowship for graduate students, SUNY at Stony Brook, 2003-07
  • 'Cruvi Scholarship' for socially active students with outstanding academic achievements, 2001-02
  • Full tuition scholarship for undergraduate students, Hebrew University, 1996-99
  • Financial aid Fellowship for undergraduate students, Hebrew University, 1996-99
  • Dean's List scholar, Hebrew University, 1996, 1997, 1998
  • The 'Payis' Award for Young Artists, 2002
  • The Rabinovich-Tel Aviv Foundation for the Promotion of Art Award, 2002

Conference Presentations and Talks

  • Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL., April 2005


  • New York State Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Niagara Falls, NY, April 2005


  • The Taub Center, New York University, New York, NY, December 2005


  • Department of Political Science, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, December 2005


  • Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, January 2006


  • Pennsylvania Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Harrisburg, PA, March 2006


  • Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL., April 2006


  • Association for Israel Studies Annual Meeting, Banff, AB, Canada, May 2006


  • American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, August 2006


  • Northeast Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, November 2006 (papers accepted)


  • Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, January 2007 (paper accepted)


Teaching Experience

Work Experience

  • Project Director, Tel Aviv University, Summer Youth University Project. The project promotes political, social and educational goals, for 50 high-potential high school students of lower socioeconomic status. Project was under the aegis of the President of Tel Aviv University Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, 2001-03


  • Founder, Director and Teacher, Center for Preparation for the Matriculation and Psychometric Exams for University Applicants, 1996 - 2002


  • Project Initiator and Director, the 'Dor Shalom' (Generation for Peace) Movement. An outreach Project for Jews of Ethiopian Origin in Israel - Eighty-five new Ethiopian immigrants participated in the project, 1999


  • Psychotherapist - Community Center for Mental Patients, Jaffa, Abarbanel Mental Institution, Bat Yam - Psychotherapy with mental patients, 1998 - 2002

Professional Affiliations

American Political Science Association
Midwest Political Science Association
Southern Political Science Association
New York State Political Science Association

Other Professional Activities

  • Reviewer for Political Psychology
  • Initiator and Coordinator - Political Science Departmental Institutions Workshop

References

Jeffrey Segal
Distinguished University Professor, Chair
Department of Political Science
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794
(631) 632-7662
Jeffrey.Segal@StonyBrook.edu

Stanley Feldman
Professor and Associate Director - Center for Survey Research
Department of Political Science
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794
(631) 632-9761
Stanley.Feldman@StonyBrook.edu

Lee Koppelman
Leading Professor
Department of Political Science
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794
(631) 632-9021
lkoppelman@notes.cc.sunysb.edu

Scott Basinger
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794
(631) 632-7624
scott.basinger@stonybrook.edu

Jeffrey Lax
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027
(212) 854-4302
jrl2124@columbia.edu

Dissertation

A Step Forward from Defensive Denials and Aggressive Grants - Are Justices Opinion-Minded when Voting on Certiorari?

I employ a New-Institutional approach to analyze how the US Supreme Court sets its agenda. I analyze the strategic relationship between cert decisions, merits votes and opinion writing. My basic question is whether justices consider their likely influence on the opinion of the court when voting to grant or to deny review. For policy and for legal reasons court opinions are of utmost importance for justices. Whereas the final disposition may have direct policy consequences (e.g. Roe and the resultant abortion policy) the effect of the opinion is of comparable magnitude if at times of a different nature. For instance, the issue of judicial review in Marshal's opinion in Marbury is not simply an answer to a yes/no question but rather a cornerstone for an evolving constitutional doctrine. Literature indicates that the decision on the merits is pivotal to the way justices set their agenda. However, justices care dearly about the law, and thus opinions, consequential as they are to jurisprudence as well as policy, potentially constitute another strategic consideration during cert. An institutional change following the Judiciary Act of 1925 increased the stakes in each case granted. The decision on certiorari is made in conference according to the Rule of Four, and only 1% of all cases make it to the Certified Orders List and win full review. The Rule of Four induces strategic behavior on the part of the justices (Epstein and Knight, 1998). The stakes are high, but does this mean that justices are purely strategic (Hammond et al., 2005)? Or are they closer to being sincere political actors protected by an institutional environment that insulates them from incentives for sophisticated strategic behavior (Segal and Spaeth, 2002)? Macro- and micro-level analyses are conducted on data from the Spaeth Supreme Court Databases for the Vinson, Warren and Burger courts. I make use of truncated data models, logistic regressions, and Generalized Linear Measurement Error models to demonstrate that justices differ considerably in terms of what factors influence which cases they choose to hear, the effect of those factors, and the extent to which justices behave strategically when casting their cert vote. Whereas some of the justices seem to make no strategic consideration of later stages, others tend to systematically look only one step ahead (i.e. the decision on the merits). The majority of these engage in aggressive grants only, while only a subgroup of the strategic justices deny review of cases they would like to hear but are afraid to lose on the merits (i.e. defensive denials). Finally, only a handful of the justices seem to be willing (or able?) to look more than one step forward - they not only defensively deny and aggressively grant, but are also able to look farther down the road. These justices seem to be making cert decisions with opinion writing in mind. The findings provide a more comprehensive view of the collegial game and its institutional antecedents, as well as a better understanding of the resulting policy and jurisprudence.


Papers

  1. Dissertation - A step forward from defensive denials and aggressive grants: Strategic Behavior during Cert

    This study analyzes the strategic relationship between cert decisions, merits votes and opinion writing on the US Supreme Court. An institutional change following the Judiciary Act of 1925 increased the stakes in each case granted. Does this mean justices are strategic in choosing which cases to decide? Strategic justices, I contend, would cast their votes on cert thinking about the solutions to the collective action problems in the court’s multistage decision making process (cooperation to maintain a dispositional majority, and coordination in creating a doctrinal majority). What they perceive as likely solutions to these cooperation and coordination problems guide justices’ vote on the court’s agenda. Analyses on the macro- and micro-levels demonstrate that some justices are indeed strategic on cert. This, however, is true to varying degrees and in more than one way. The findings provide a more comprehensive view of the collegial game and its institutional antecedents, as well as a better understanding of the resulting policy and jurisprudence.
    APSA - August 2006[ .pdf ]

  2. Confirming Supreme Court Justices: Women Votes and the Electoral Connection

    With the Bork and Thomas confirmation battles the salience of gender politics increased. The fear of a conservative originalist sitting as a Supreme Court justice that will lead to the overruling of Roe was common to several women movements. The issue of women protection from sexual harassment and women rights in general became even more salient with Anita Hill's testimony before the Senate. If we assume congresspersons to be relentless reelection seekers who consider each of their moves in light of their next reelection bid, it is likely that senators voting on those nominations heeded to gender politics. My unit of analysis is individual senators. I find significant effects for women constituencies, particularly when the senator's home state is ideologically moderate. No effect, however, was found for reelection, which means concerns about women constituencies transpire in Supreme Court confirmation roll-calls notwithstanding the proximity of elections. In the decade and a half since the Thomas confirmation, women votes, women organized interests and women candidates have become increasingly central in American politics. Indeed effects are more pronounced in the recent Senate vote on Alito. Yet, I fail to find significant results for the Roberts vote. Finally, I find strong support for the model when tested on a database that consists of all four nominations.
    MPSA - April 2006[ .pdf ]

  3. Institutionally-induced Strategic Judicial Behavior

    (with M. Eser Sekercioglu) Although it deals with courts as institutions within their political systems, the comparative judicial politics literature has paid little attention to comparisons of internal judicial institutions and strategies. This is done in this paper for the US and the Israeli Supreme Courts within a New Institutional framework. Both the American Chief Justice and the Israeli President of the Court are greatly empowered by internal institutions governing the collegial game. Yet, those institutions are fundamentally different between the two courts. This also means that the sets of institutionally induced strategic judicial behaviors in each court differ. We compare strategic behaviors and their institutional antecedents on the two courts. For the US Supreme Court we take advantage of existing judicial politics literature. However, little literature dealing with strategic judicial behavior on the Israeli court exists. Hence, we use formal modeling to elucidate the types of strategic behaviors transpiring on this court, and then test hypotheses empirically. Suggestions for future research follow.


  4. A New Institutional Approach to Decision Making on the Israeli High Court of Justice: National Security Cases

    Traditionally the weakest branch, the judiciary’s toolkit has unique virtues such as well-developed decision-making mechanisms. In times of political fragmentation courts may gain legitimacy and influence by using those unique tools strategically. For courts that make decisions in panels, two necessary conditions – unanimity within and consistency between panels - should be met for strategic behavior of the institution as a whole to emerge. A spatial model is used to show how internal institutions allow the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) to meet those conditions. Further, strategic judicial behavior of HCJ as an institution is demonstrated with the effect of extralegal variables. A logistic model shows that executive ideology, identity of opinion writer, and terror plus other variables predict holdings in security cases. This explains the prominence of HCJ in the Israeli political sphere. Finally, theoretical aspects and applicability to the American case as well as other cases are discussed.
    SPSA - January 2006

  5. Conversion due to Expansion: Comparative analysis of the collegial games on the US and Israeli Supreme Courts

  6. Constitutional Alternation - On the role of alternation in the realm of constitutionalism - Or - Why do minorities go to court?

    In this paper I attempt to establish a theoretical foundation for a mechanism I call constitutional alternation. This mechanism, I argue, can explain why minorities repeatedly choose the legal path to promote their agendas although history shows that almost as a rule they lose their case in court. Like in politics in general, alternation in the realm of constitutionalism allows minorities to make inter-temporal considerations. The interest of the administration in allowing this cyclical process to take place and the timing of constitutional change are also discussed.
    (an earlier version presented at the New York State Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Niagara Falls, NY, 2005)[ .pdf ]

  7. Energy Planning on Long Island, NY

    (with Lee Koppelman) This document is an excerpt from the Energy Policy Section of the forthcoming Long Island Comprehensive Plan. The Plan is a publication of the Center for Regional Policy Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Teaching Experience

I am an experienced and skilled instructor who is very passionate about teaching. As an instructor I have taught Ph.D., MA, and undergraduate classes in Constitutional Law, Civil Liberties, Methods (math and statistics), American politics, and comparative. This year teaching evaluation survey averages ranged from 1.25 to 1.9 on a scale of 1 (best) to 7 (worst). I have considerable experience as an instructor with advising graduate students in writing research projects that employ a variety of methodologies ranging from limited dependent variable models to time series. Additionally, in my capacities as an instructor at Stony Brook and as a project director at Tel Aviv University, I advised undergraduate students in choices concerning their future careers in law, medicine and other fields.

  1. Ph.D. level



  2. M.A. level



  3. Undergraduate level


Data
  • No data available at present

Poetry and Short Stories

  • Literary publications

    Published short stories and poetry in several Israeli periodicals and daily newspapers, among them Ha'aretz, Ma'ariv, Yedioth Aharonoth, Iton '77, Moznayim, Gag, Mitan, Shvo, Emda, and Helicon.


  • Order of the Acts of Love

    volume of poetry published by Emda/Bittan Publishers, Tel Aviv, 2002.


    • The poems - © 2002. All rights reserved to The Author and The Publishers EMDA/BITAN Publishers, Tel Aviv. Printed In Israel, 2002[ .pdf ]
    • Cover[ .gif ] (Cover design: Michal Mazar)
    • on Mitos.co.il


  • Perhaps

    A new manuscript, 2005.
    Most poems in this manuscript have been published in literary periodicals and daily newspapers during 2003, 2004 and 2005.


    • The manuscript [ .pdf ]

Pictures

Links