Judges Commons^™

Distinguishing Judges: An Empirical Ranking Of Judicial Quality In The United States Court Of Appeals, Robert Anderson

Robert Anderson IV

This article presents an empirical quality ranking of 383 federal appellate judges who served on the United States Court of Appeals between 1960 and 2008. Like existing judge evaluation studies, this article uses citations among judicial opinions to assess judicial quality. Unlike existing citation studies, which treat positive and negative citations alike, this article ranks judges according to the mix of positive and negative citations to the opinions, rather than the number of citations to those opinions. By distinguishing between positive and negative citations, this approach avoids ranking judges higher for citations even when the judges are being cited negatively. …