Placing State Supreme Courts in State Politics

Brace, Paul; Hall, Melinda Gann; Langer, Laura

doi:10.1177/153244000100100106

Cited by 40 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…The state high courts present a useful data set because, in each of the fifty states, we have a set of judges doing similar tasks, but laboring under different conditions (Brace, Hall & Langer 2001). The states vary in how much they pay judges, what the mandatory retirement age is, how many law clerks the judges have, the salaries of the law clerks, and so on.…”

Section: The Data Set: State High Courtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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Section: The Data Set: State High Courtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…PAJID Score PAJID score for each judge as developed by Brace, Hall & Langer (2001). These scores locate judges on a political continuum from highly conservative (0) to highly liberal (100).…”

Section: Election Spendingmentioning

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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“…G. Hall, 1985;M. G. Hall & Brace, 1989) and (b) member resources (e.g., selection system, seniority rules, and term length) moderate the influence of other political factors (e.g., two-party competition, judge seniority, and party affiliation) on consensus (Brace & Boyea, 2008;Brace & Hall, 1993, 1997Brace, Hall, & Langer, 2001). In contrast, we argue that member resources moderate the influence of the chief's formal powers.…”

Section: The Chief's Powersmentioning

confidence: 69%

Discouraging Dissent

Hall

Windett

2016

American Politics Research

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Chief judges often strive to promote consensus in their courts to promote public confidence, durable precedents, and intracourt collegiality; yet, some chiefs succeed, whereas others fail. In this article, we identify institutional factors that facilitate and hinder the chief's ability to promote consensus by examining dissent rates in every state court of last resort from 1995 to 2004. Consistent with prior work, we find that consensus is partially driven by the chief judge's formal powers and the institutional resources available to court members. However, we also find that member resources moderate the chief's influence. The chief's formal powers are associated with lower dissent rates in courts that lack time, staff, docket control, and insulation from the electorate. In contrast, judges who possess greater resources are highly resistant to the chief's influence. Our findings suggest a fundamental dynamic of political leadership that may operate across institutional contexts.

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“…Elections also affect, among other things, docket composition (e.g., Brace, Hall, and Langer 2001;Langer 2002), judicial review (Brace, Hall, and Langer 2001;Langer 2002), and adherence to precedent (Comparato and McClurg 2007;Hoekstra 2005).…”

Section: Constituent Influence In State Supreme Court Decision Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, the impact of public preferences, whether measured as state ideology (e.g., Brace and Hall 1997;Brace, Hall, and Langer 2001) or as aggregate opinion on specific issues (e.g., Brace and Boyea 2008) is stronger when justices are elected.…”

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confidence: 99%

Representation in State Supreme Courts

Hall

2013

Political Research Quarterly

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This research capitalizes on the analytical opportunity created by mandatory retirement provisions to explore the nature of the electoral connection in state supreme courts and to illustrate how changes in institutional context can modify the decisional propensities of political elites and reshape their fundamental roles. Specifically, this work demonstrates that mandatory retirement obviates the representative function by disconnecting key mechanisms through which public preferences are translated into judicial votes: threat conditions that elevate the risk of electoral censure. In state supreme courts, popular votes are in part strategic and result from a complex interaction of goals, institutions, and external pressures.

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Placing State Supreme Courts in State Politics

Cited by 40 publications

References 73 publications

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

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

Discouraging Dissent

Representation in State Supreme Courts

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