The Political Ideologies of American Lawyers

Bonica, Adam; Chilton, Adam S.; Sen, Maya

doi:10.1093/jla/lav011

Cited by 58 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Across the entire time period, counties spent the largest amount on redistribution (a combination of healthcare, hospitals, housing, and welfare), education, and administration. While the level of many of these spending areas is relatively constant over time, public safety expenditures rise steadily by more than 65% between 1990 and 2012 in revealed behavior that can be used as a proxy for county legislative candidates' ideology, much in the way that other researchers have used these scores to compare the ideology of candidates in federal, state, and city elections, as well as corporate executives, judges, agency appointees, lawyers, and medical professionals Bonica, Rosenthal, and Rothman, 2014;Bonica, Chilton, and Sen, 2015;Bonica, 2016). 15 For our analysis on the causal impact of legislators, it is crucial to accurately assign fiscal data to the appropriate year.…”

Section: County Fiscal Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics in Forgotten Governments: The Partisan Composition of County Legislatures and County Fiscal Policies

Warshaw

Benedictis-Kessner

2020

The Journal of Politics

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County governments are a crucial component of the fabric of American democracy. Yet there has been almost no previous research on the policy e↵ects of the partisan composition of county governments. Most counties in the United States have small legislatures, usually called commissions or councils, that set their budgets and other policies. In this study, we examine whether counties with Democratic legislators spend more than counties with Republican ones. We assemble an original dataset of 10,708 elections in approximately 298 medium and large counties over the past 25 years. Based on a regression discontinuity design, we find that electing a Democratic legislator rather than a Republican one leads the average county to increase spending by about 5%. Overall, our findings contribute to a growing literature on the policy consequences of partisan control of state and local government. They show that the partisan selection of county legislators has important policy e↵ects in county governments.

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Section: County Fiscal Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics in Forgotten Governments: The Partisan Composition of County Legislatures and County Fiscal Policies

Warshaw

Benedictis-Kessner

2020

The Journal of Politics

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“…For an overview of the ideological leanings of the professional bar, seeBonica et al (2016). We note that law professors tend to donate at higher rates than do lawyers at large-64% compared to 41%.…”

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confidence: 89%

“…We anticipate that some of the greatest variation in the ideologies of law professors will be across law schools. Law schools have different ideological cultures, with differences in the ideologies of alumni comporting with the popular reputations of the programs (Bonica et al, 2016 We next consider whether the difference in average professor ideology by law school is driven by the absence of conservative professors or by more moderate liberal professors. Figure 5 plots the ideological distribution of the professors at the most elite law schools-traditionally known as the "T14" (or the Top 14) law schools.…”

Section: Ideologies Of Law Professors By Law Schoolmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the assessment of the ideological balance of the legal academy should consider the ideological distribution of the population of potential law professors. Because lawyers-and particularly elite lawyers-are also overwhelmingly liberal (Bonica et al, 2016), it may be the case that law professors simply share the political ideology of the population from which they are drawn.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They found that 75 professors were net donors to Democrats, 24 professors were net donors to Republicans, and 57 professors made no donations. Second,Bonica et al (2016) examined the political ideologies of lawyers in the Martindale-Hubbell directory. They found that lawyers who identified as law professors were more liberal than other lawyers.2 See Phillips (2016) for a great summary of these studies.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Legal Academy’s Ideological Uniformity

Bonica¹,

Chilton²,

Rozema³

et al. 2018

The Journal of Legal Studies

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We compare the ideological balance of the legal academy to the ideological balance of the legal profession. To do so, we match professors listed in the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Law Teachers and lawyers listed in the Martindale-Hubbell directory to a measure of political ideology based on political donations. We find that 15% of law professors, compared to 35% of lawyers, are conservative. After controlling for individual characteristics, however, this 20 percentage point ideological gap narrows to around 13 percentage points. We argue that this ideological uniformity marginalizes law professors, but that it may not be possible to improve the ideological balance of the legal academy without sacrificing other values.

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Legitimization and Validity of Directives on Legal Interpretation on the Example of the Rule of Law Crisis in Poland

Piszko

2020

Int J Semiot Law

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In case when the criteria for the validity of interpretative directives are not clearly defined and a political dispute arises, the dispute participant may refer to such interpretative directives, the use of which will determine the content of the law and determine the outcome of the political dispute. In this way a crisis of the legal order in Poland has occurred. Therefore, the aim of this article is to draw attention to the consequences of the undefined status of the directives of legal interpretation, the resulting need for legitimacy of the interpretation of the law, the role of legal views (legal doctrine) possible in this respect and the validation role of the interpretation custom in legal doctrine. The article consists of four parts. The first one describes the phenomena that have disrupted the traditional approach to the sources of law. The second part describes the traditional approach to the sources of the law. The third one proves that the traditional approach to the sources of law, in which the main role is fulfilled by normative acts, is incorrect, this part also indicates that the key role in this respect is played by spontaneous rules of law interpretation. The fourth part indicates the need to legitimize the interpretation of the law and the role of the interpretation custom in judicial doctrine. The research material includes parliamentary practice in Poland, practice of law interpretation and scientific studies on law interpretation. The research material was examined mainly using the method of linguistic analysis.

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The Political Ideologies of American Lawyers

Cited by 58 publications

References 24 publications

Politics in Forgotten Governments: The Partisan Composition of County Legislatures and County Fiscal Policies

Politics in Forgotten Governments: The Partisan Composition of County Legislatures and County Fiscal Policies

The Legal Academy’s Ideological Uniformity

Legitimization and Validity of Directives on Legal Interpretation on the Example of the Rule of Law Crisis in Poland

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