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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Long Shadow Of Bush V. Gore: Judicial Partisanship In Election Cases, Michael S. Kang, Joanna M. Shepherd
The Long Shadow Of Bush V. Gore: Judicial Partisanship In Election Cases, Michael S. Kang, Joanna M. Shepherd
Faculty Articles
Bush v. Gore decided a presidential election and is the most dramatic election case in our lifetime, but cases like it are decided every year at the state level. Ordinary state courts regularly decide questions of election rules and administration that effectively determine electoral outcomes hanging immediately in the balance. Election cases like Bush v. Gore embody a fundamental worry with judicial intervention into the political process: outcome-driven, partisan judicial decisionmaking. The Article investigates whether judges decide cases, particularly politically sensitive ones, based on their partisan loyalties more than the legal merits of the cases. It presents a novel method …
Money, Politics, And Impartial Justice, Joanna Shepherd
Money, Politics, And Impartial Justice, Joanna Shepherd
Faculty Articles
A centuries-old controversy asks whether judicial elections are inconsistent with impartial justice. The debate is especially important because more than 90 percent of the United States’ judicial business is handled by state courts, and approximately nine in ten of all state court judges face the voters in some type of election. Using a stunning new data set of virtually all state supreme court decisions from 1995 to 1998, this paper provides empirical evidence that elected state supreme court judges routinely adjust their rulings to attract votes and campaign money. I find that judges who must be reelected by Republican voters, …