The APA’s Amicus Attempts to Influence the Supreme Court

Abstract

About half the time the American Psychological Association submits an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, the Court’s eventual decision is consistent—or at least partly consistent—with the APA’s position. This chapter examines in detail some cases that reflect, for want of a better term, “success” on the APA’s part. That is not to say that in all of these cases the APA’s position was directly reflected in the wording of the decision; the brief may have achieved some success by causing the Court to think about new issues, even if the process is not clearly discernible in the eventual published opinion. The examples that follow reflect such qualifications.