“…Because the focus of the present study is on the influence of judicial background characteristics in the sentencing of criminal cases, studies of appellate case outcomes (e.g., Collins & Moyer, 2007;Nagel, 1961;Tiede, Carp, & Manner, 2010;Walker & Barrow, 1985), federal magistrate outcomes (Kulik et al, 2003), State Supreme Court outcomes (e.g., Songer & Crews-Meyer, 2000;Songer & Tabrizi, 1999), and Federal Supreme Court outcomes (e.g., Tate, 1981) are omitted, as are the few studies examining aggregate districtlevel characteristics (e.g., Schanzenbach, 2005;Ward et al, 2009). Because the focus of the present study is on the influence of judicial background characteristics in the sentencing of criminal cases, studies of appellate case outcomes (e.g., Collins & Moyer, 2007;Nagel, 1961;Tiede, Carp, & Manner, 2010;Walker & Barrow, 1985), federal magistrate outcomes (Kulik et al, 2003), State Supreme Court outcomes (e.g., Songer & Crews-Meyer, 2000;Songer & Tabrizi, 1999), and Federal Supreme Court outcomes (e.g., Tate, 1981) are omitted, as are the few studies examining aggregate districtlevel characteristics (e.g., Schanzenbach, 2005;Ward et al, 2009).…”