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Full-Text Articles in Law
Justice For Sale: Contemplations On The "Impartial" Judge In A Citizens United World, Aviva Abramovsky
Justice For Sale: Contemplations On The "Impartial" Judge In A Citizens United World, Aviva Abramovsky
Aviva Abramovsky
Although it has long been in vogue to discredit the judiciary, it remains the most trusted of the three branches of government. However, empirical evidence supports the idea that judicial campaign donations affect judicial decision making. The reality of political campaigns under Citizens United has the potential to further undermine the public perception of judges and to enhance the potential for corruption of the judiciary.
Judging Law In Election Cases, Michael S. Kang, Joanna Shepherd
Judging Law In Election Cases, Michael S. Kang, Joanna Shepherd
Faculty Articles
In Part I, we introduce our earlier work on election cases and judicial partisanship before setting forth our new approach to studying the influence of law on judicial decisionmaking. We describe the special nature of the election cases in our database that allow more persuasive inferences of judicial partisanship than typically derived in empirical work on judicial behavior. We then explain our new approach for measuring case strength based on counterpartisan decisionmaking by judges. In Part II, we apply our approach to case strength to our dataset and present our results. In a nutshell, partisanship appears to matter as expected …
The Ideological Consequences Of Selection: A Nationwide Study Of The Methods Of Selecting Judges, Brian T. Fitzpatrick
The Ideological Consequences Of Selection: A Nationwide Study Of The Methods Of Selecting Judges, Brian T. Fitzpatrick
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
One topic that has gone largely unexplored in the long debate over how best to select judges is whether there are any ideological consequences to employing one selection method versus another. The goal of this study is to assess whether certain methods of selection have resulted in judiciaries that skew to the left or right compared with the public at large in those states. In particular, I examine the ideological preferences of state appellate judges in all 50 states over a 20-year period (1990-2010) as measured by their relative affiliation with the Republican or Democratic Party through campaign contributions, voter …
Judges As Politicians: The Enduring Tension Of Judicial Elections In The Twenty-First Century, Richard Lorren Jolly
Judges As Politicians: The Enduring Tension Of Judicial Elections In The Twenty-First Century, Richard Lorren Jolly
Notre Dame Law Review Reflection
Elections transform the basis of judicial legitimacy. Whereas a permanently appointed judiciary finds support in its supposed neutrality, the democratic judiciary demands responsiveness. Yet while this is obvious to scholars, the electorate, and most judges—and is in fact confirmed by much statistical data—the Supreme Court and others continue to insist that judicial campaigns can be sculpted to ensure robust democratic debate without compromising the bench’s impartiality. This Essay rejects the notion that the court can be both democratic and disinterested. It reviews the volatile history of judicial elections as well as the modern web of distinctions between protected and proscribable …