Neo-Institutionalism and Dissent in State Supreme Courts

Brace, Paul; Hall, Melinda Gann

doi:10.2307/2131419

Cited by 137 publications

(127 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Where chief justices control opinion assignments, outcomes and agreement are structured like the U.S. Supreme Court (Maltzman and Wahlbeck 2004). By increasing the impact of a chief justice's policy preferences on the selection of opinion authors, fewer expressions of dissent are observed (Brace and Hall 1990;Langer, Williams, and Sanchez 2004). Where opinions are distributed randomly or by the consensus of the court, however, the expression of dissent is more common.…”

Section: Theoretical Framework: Judicial Leadership and Institutionalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leadership and Election Litigation in State Supreme Courts

Boyea

Farrar-Myers

2011

State and Local Government Review

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Elections in the American states are important mechanisms for legitimizing state governments by facilitating the involvement of citizens in electing political leaders. Elections, however, receive scrutiny through challenges in state courts on issues such as contested elections and the structure and context of election ballots. Capitalizing on attention to the role of leadership in institutional maintenance, the analysis presented examines the effects of leadership and other essential political and legal characteristics on building decision consensus in election cases. An empirical test using 203 election decisions by state supreme courts from 1995 to 1998 illustrates that, among other factors, the authority of leadership facilitates consensus where considered jointly with the resources of courts, the state as a litigant, and internal rules that prioritize seniority.

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Section: Theoretical Framework: Judicial Leadership and Institutionalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leadership and Election Litigation in State Supreme Courts

Boyea

Farrar-Myers

2011

State and Local Government Review

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“…In neither case do these additional controls make a difference to the coefficients for our main results (cf. Brace & Hall 1990) (finding that institutional variables, such as whether the state has an intermediate appellate court, explain a significant portion of the variation in dissent numbers).…”

Section: Judge Controlsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Judges Overpaid?: A Skeptical Response to the Judicial Salary Debate

Choi¹,

Gulati²,

Posner

2009

Journal of Legal Analysis

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The public debate over the need to raise judicial salaries has been one-sided. Sentiment appears to be that judges are underpaid. But neither theory nor evidence provides much support for this view. The primary argument being made in favor of a pay increase is that it will raise the quality of judging. Theory suggests that increasing judicial salaries will improve judicial performance only if judges can be sanctioned for performing inadequately or if the appointments process reliably screens out low-ability candidates. However, federal judges and many state judges cannot be sanctioned, and the reliability of screening processes is open to question. An empirical study of the high court judges of the fifty states provides little evidence that raising salaries would improve judicial performance.

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“…In this section, I model the justices' votes in cases that were not unanimous (common because of institutional norms, see Brace and Hall 1990) or per curiam. After accounting for the non-participation of justices, we are left with 149 observations.…”

Section: Justice-level Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Campaign Contributions and Judicial Behavior

Cann¹

2002

ARP

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Many states select judges using competitive elections. Proponents of appointment plans contend that judicial candidates may be tempted to grant favors to lawyers who donate to their campaigns, thus compromising the independence of the judiciary. I contend that previous studies have failed to rigorously test the hypothesis that campaign contributions directly affect judicial decision-making. Using data from the 1998 term of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, I show that lawyers who make campaign contributions are no more likely to win cases than lawyers who do not. Furthermore, the data show that judges who are faced by lawyers who contributed large amounts to their campaigns are more likely to recuse themselves.

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Neo-Institutionalism and Dissent in State Supreme Courts

Cited by 137 publications

References 16 publications

Leadership and Election Litigation in State Supreme Courts

Leadership and Election Litigation in State Supreme Courts

Are Judges Overpaid?: A Skeptical Response to the Judicial Salary Debate

Campaign Contributions and Judicial Behavior

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