About

Sahar Abi-Hassan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University's College of Social Sciences and Humanities. She earned her PhD in Political Science from Boston University. Her research focuses on the behavior of Supreme Court justices and the groups that lobby them. She has recently completed her dissertation, which examines the influence that inter-group behavior and coalition formation have on judicial behavior. Her broader academic interests include the behavior of U.S. political institutions, political analysis, and quantitative political methodology. In her research, she utilizes tools such as network analysis and maximum likelihood estimation. She currently has several papers under review in the Journal of Politics and the Journal of Political Analysis.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Law
• Physics
• Economics
• Law and economics
• Astronomy

Selected publications

• Supply-Side Dynamics of the US Supreme Court Docket: The Spatial-Temporal Landscape of Writ of Cert Petitions

  Harvard Dataverse · 2026-04-01

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Existing scholarship on US Supreme Court certiorari has largely centered on the demand-side, prioritizing the internal motivations of justices. This approach often overlooks the broader supply-side perspective—the nature and evolution of the com- plete pool of petitions. This study addresses this gap by analyzing the universe of writs of certiorari from 1946–2019. Coding for petition date and origin, petitioner identity, and disposition, we trace the composition of petitions across eras and jurisdictions. By linking petitions to merits-stage attributes, we find that the Court’s plenary docket is selected from a geographically and organizationally uneven petition environment, that federal-origin petitions dominate both filings and the docket, and that institutional repeat players succeed at higher rates than individuals despite a steady increase in pe- titions from the latter. By mapping this upstream landscape, we provide a descriptive baseline and measurement framework that illuminates the dynamics of the petition supply and provides context to the demand-side accounts of Supreme Court agenda- setting.

  PublisherDOI

• Supply-Side Dynamics of the US Supreme Court Docket: The Spatial-Temporal Landscape of Writ of Cert Petitions

  Journal of Law and Courts · 2026-05-22

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Existing scholarship on US Supreme Court certiorari has largely centered on the demand side, prioritizing the internal motivations of justices. This approach often overlooks the broader supply-side perspective—the nature and evolution of the complete pool of petitions. This study addresses this gap by analyzing the universe of writs of certiorari from 1946 to 2019. Coding for petition date and origin, petitioner identity, and disposition, we trace the composition of petitions across eras and jurisdictions. By linking petitions to merits-stage attributes, we find that the Court’s plenary docket is selected from a geographically and organizationally uneven petition environment, that federal-origin petitions dominate both filings and the docket, and that institutional repeat players succeed at higher rates than individuals despite a steady increase in petitions from the latter. By mapping this upstream landscape, we provide a descriptive baseline and measurement framework that illuminates the dynamics of the petition supply and provides context to the demand-side accounts of Supreme Court agenda-setting.

  PublisherDOI

• The Downstream Effects of Certiorari: Agenda-Setting, Amicus Briefs, and Opinion Writing on the US Supreme Court

  Journal of Law and Courts · 2025-01-10 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The majority opinion of the Supreme Court establishes precedent, but separate opinion writing affords the justices the ability to expound upon it or express their disagreement with the ruling or its logic. We broaden the exploration of separate opinion writing to consider how decisions and case features at the moment of granting cert shape justices’ decisions to engage in nonconsensual behavior. We also sharpen the focus on external actors to consider the nature of amici curiae. Through an empirical study of Supreme Court cases between 1986 and 1993, we find that aspects of the agenda-setting stage affect justices’ decisions at the litigation stage. In addition, we find that the number of briefs and the diversity of organized interests impacted by the case is particularly relevant to justices. The decision to write a separate opinion is the product of internal and external factors over the full course of a case’s history.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Signals of Unlikely Allies: Ideologically Diverse Amicus Coalitions and Judicial Behavior

  American Politics Research · 2025-09-08

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Interest groups use amicus curiae briefs to supply courts with essential information while advocating for their political and policy preferences. Through these briefs, they form alliances with various interests, supporting either the liberal or conservative side of a case. The composition of these alliances – considering the status, prestige, and ideology of the involved interest groups – acts as a heuristic for justices, helping them prioritize relevant and credible information, learn about policy realignments, and the impact of their decision on public policy. This paper posits that the ideological structure of amicus coalitions sends influential signals that affect justices’ voting behavior. Using a merged dataset of the amicus curiae network, the ACNet ideal scores, and the Supreme Court database (1955–2012), the findings suggest that support from a diverse amicus coalition increases the likelihood of a justice’s vote for that litigant. Moreover, these signals are moderated by a justice’s ideology and the issue area of the case.

  PublisherDOI

• A Common Paradigm in a Universe of Applications

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Astronomy
  • Physics

  Abstract As an approach based on relational data, network theory offers a unique perspective brought to bear on problems that range across the arts, sciences and humanities. For social scientists in particular, networks provide a new way to look at old, as well as new problems. Social network analysis (SNA) allows us to study human behavior from an individual perspective, and as the product of the environmental structure they are embedded in. Supported by an increasingly available range of data and extensive advances in computer science, network science provides the tools for descriptive analysis, as well as inferential statistical modeling. This chapter begins with a review of several important contributions of network theory as a common paradigm, and how this has been applied to various social scientific fields—i.e., political and social networks. Thereafter, the chapter discusses the application of SNA to the area of interest group theory. Specifically, it illustrates how the organizational identity of interest groups can be shaped by their network.

  PublisherDOI

• The Ideologies of Organized Interests and Amicus Curiae Briefs: Large-Scale, Social Network Imputation of Ideal Points

  Political Analysis · 2023 · 12 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science

  Abstract Interest group ideology is theoretically and empirically critical in the study of American politics, yet our measurement of this key concept is lacking both in scope and time. By leveraging network science and ideal point estimation, we provide a novel measure of ideology for amicus curiae briefs and organized interests with accompanying uncertainty estimates. Our Amicus Curiae Network scores cover more than 12,000 unique groups and more than 11,000 briefs across 95 years, providing the largest and longest measure of organized interest ideologies to date. Substantively, the scores reveal that: interests before the Court are ideologically polarized, despite variance in their coalition strategies; interests that donate to campaigns are more conservative and balanced than those that do not; and amicus curiae briefs were more common from liberal organizations until the 1980s, with ideological representation virtually balanced since then.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A network approach to influence: interest group composition and judicial behavior

  OpenBU (Boston University) · 2020-01-01

  dissertation1st authorCorresponding

  How do individual qualities of interest groups and group interactions influence public policy through the courts? This research is grounded in two primary assumptions: 1) neither are all amicus briefs (formal tool to lobby the court) equal, nor do amicus-filing organizations have the same attributes, and 2) the behavior of Supreme Court justices is shaped by the qualities of actors external to the court. Through advanced statistical techniques, and the tools of network analysis, I build on previous scholarship to provide a large-scale study of how the qualities of amicus brief cosigners, and their interaction within their advocacy network over time, bear on judicial politics. Making use of the total population of amicus-filling organizations to U.S. Supreme Court cases between 1945 and 2012, chapter 1 uses a dynamic network analysis to investigate the evolution of organizational identity and coalition behavior of interest groups based on the issue area they advocate for. Chapter 2 investigates the impact of the ideological composition of interest groups supporting the litigants on the justices’ vote. Chapter 3 analyzes how decision at the agenda-setting stage interacts with outside lobbying to influence the opinion-writing process on merit. The results provide a more comprehensive picture a more comprehensive picture of judicial lobbying; a crucial piece in the operation of the American democracy.

  Publisher

• Populism in Venezuela: the role of the opposition

  Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · 2019-01-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Populism in Venezuela

  2018-10-11 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The level of political and social polarization that accompanies populist politics points to an active role for those that fall into the category of the “other” as much as those that are considered the “pure people.” Throughout the last 15 years, two main political poles have consolidated in Venezuela, those in favor of the late President Hugo Chavez or Chavistas and those in opposition. Despite their divergent propositions and consequent deep social polarization, the two camps share similarities and in a way each has reinforced the existence of the other through its discursive practices. Moreover, this emergent populist discourse has been greatly mediated by a set of political institutions, redefining the political space in Venezuela. Through process tracing, this chapter investigates the role of the opposition in the consolidation of a populist discourse in Venezuela. Preliminary conclusions suggest that a radical and polarizing response from the opposition served to further radicalize and reinforce the Chavistas’ populist discourse. In time, this transformed the political space from one guided by liberal democratic principles to one run by a populist logic.

  PublisherDOI

• Populism and Gender

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2017-11-06 · 35 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Despite the breadth and depth of inquiries into populism, its relationship with gender issues remains a widely understudied topic. On one hand, focus has been almost entirely on male leadership, despite the presence of a significant number of female populist leaders. On the other hand, procedural definitions of populism ignore the substantive and symbolic elements that emerge from a populist gendered discourse. Through a generalized discussion and references to specific examples in Europe and Latin America, this chapter explores three major topics at the intersection of populism and gender: populist supporters, populist gendered representation, and the subordination of personal (gender) identity in populist discourse. Consistent with previous studies, it illustrates the difficulty in finding common patterns in the populist treatment of gender issues, and where they emerge it is an instance of trends in gendered discourse, not populist discourse.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Janet M. Box‐Steffensmeier

  The Ohio State University

  1 shared

• Brian Libgober

  1 shared

• Dino Christenson

  1 shared

• Aaron Kaufman

  1 shared

Labs

• Political SciencePI

Education

• Philosophical Doctor, Political Science

  Boston University

  2020

• Masters of Public and International Affairs, School of Policy and International Affairs

  Virginia Tech Research Center - Arlington

  2013