Formal Judicial Recruitment and State Supreme Court Decisions

Atkins, Burton M.; Glick, Henry R.

doi:10.1177/1532673x7400200404

Cited by 32 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Canon (1972), Flango and Ducat (1979), Glick and Emmert (1987), and Hurwitz and Lanier (2003, 2008 find no support for merit-selected judges to be any different in their characteristics than appointed or elected judges. Furthermore, prior findings suggest there are no differences between the decisionmaking (Watson and Downing 1969;Atkins and Glick 1974;O'Callaghan 1991;Romero et al 2002) or the judicial quality (Watson and Downing 1969) of merit-selected and elected judges. Canes-Wrone et al (2014) finds merit-selected judges to be less influenced by public opinion but only during the era prior to the defeat of California's state Supreme Court justice Rose Bird in 1986 -an event that has indicates the beginning of the recent new-style judicial campaigns (Canes-Wrone et al 2014, 37).…”

Section: Judicial Selection and Objective Measures Of Judicial Perfor...mentioning

confidence: 97%

Does Judicial Selection Affect Judicial Performance? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Vakilifathi

Kousser

2020

The Forum

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Do judges selected by merit review commissions perform better than elected judges or those directly appointed by elected officials? This is a central question in both the academic study of state judicial institutions and the policy discourse about how to reform them. To address it, we take advantage of the variation in the means of the selection for trial court judges within Arizona, a state comprised of appointed, elected, and merit-selected trial court judges. This unique context allows us to use an objective measure of judicial performance – the reversal rate of trial court cases appealed to Arizona’s state appellate courts – to evaluate judges by their means of selection. We gather an original dataset on 2919 cases heard by 176 judges, estimating multivariate models that control for characteristics of cases and of judges. Overall, we find that elected judges have a lower reversal rate than merit-selected judges. Our findings question the conventional wisdom in the state courts literature in favor of merit selection and against judicial elections, and encourage further work on the effects of judges’ means of selection beyond state supreme courts to include state appellate and trial courts.

show abstract

Section: Judicial Selection and Objective Measures Of Judicial Perfor...mentioning

confidence: 97%

Does Judicial Selection Affect Judicial Performance? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Vakilifathi

Kousser

2020

The Forum

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Previous studies, for example, have estimated the relationship between judges' rulings and judicial selection procedures (Atkins & Glick, 1974;Canon, 1972;Gryski, Main, & Dixon, 1986;Hall, 1992;Hall & Brace, 1989), the presence of an intermediate appellate court (Atkins & Glick, 1976;Canon & Jaros, 1970), states' sociopolitical environment (Canon & Jaros, 1970;Glick & Pruet, 1986;Hall & Brace, 1996), and other institutional variations across courts (Brace & Hall, 1990;Hall & Brace, 1992).…”

Section: Law Politics and Judicial Behavior In The Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Integrated Model of Privacy Decision Making in State Supreme Courts

Flemming¹,

Holian

Mezey

1998

American Politics Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study predicts state supreme court judges' votes on claims based on a right to privacy by estimating an integrated model that incorporates contextual, attitudinal, and legal variables, including U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Consistent with previous research on judicial decision making, the results suggest that judges' rulings are influenced by various extralegal factors, both individual and contextual. But politics do not entirely overwhelm the role of law. U.S. Supreme Court precedent—when it exists—substantially constrains judges' responses to privacy claims in the states.The extent to which court rulings are based on the facts of a case or on judges' own policy preferences poses a question that continues to dominate judicial research. A growing body of evidence, exemplified by Segal and Spaeth's (1993) work on the so-called attitudinal model, suggests that judges' ideologies and political values play an important role in court decisions. This conclusion dismisses the validity of the so-called legal model, which holds that case facts and precedents are-or should be-the primary determinants of how judges decide cases. According to the attitudinal model, legal factors may play a role in judicial decisions, but their impact is mediated to a large degree by the way judges perceive them. Even when reviewing the same case, liberal judges may focus on one set of facts whereas conservative judges focus on another. As a result, judges' decisions are colored by their ideological interpretations of a case.' I Authors' Note: We are grateful to Professor James Garand and several anonymous reviewers for their comments on earher versions of this article.

show abstract

“…Although the literature abounds with normative discussions about the ill-effects of choosing judges by election rather than appointment, the literature has failed to detect any differences that relate to method of judicial selection in either the simple background characteristics of judges (Jacob 1964;Canon 1972;Watson and Downing 1969) or in the tendency to support certain types of litigants (Atkins and Glick 1974). Although the literature abounds with normative discussions about the ill-effects of choosing judges by election rather than appointment, the literature has failed to detect any differences that relate to method of judicial selection in either the simple background characteristics of judges (Jacob 1964;Canon 1972;Watson and Downing 1969) or in the tendency to support certain types of litigants (Atkins and Glick 1974).…”

Section: Risk-taking Propensitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%