Supreme Court Elections: How Much They Have Changed, Why They Changed, and What Difference It Makes

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 900-923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Baum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Community ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
Selection Systems

This essay draws on four recent studies of elections to state supreme courts in the United States to probe widely perceived changes in the scale and content of electoral campaigns for seats on state supreme courts. 1 Evidence from these studies and other sources indicates that changes have indeed occurred, though they are more limited than most commentaries suggest. These changes stem most directly from trends in state supreme court policy that have attracted interest-group activity, especially from the business community. Like their extent, the effects of change in supreme court campaigns have been meaningful although exaggerated by many observers. What we have learned about changes in supreme court elections has implications for choices among selection systems, but those implications are mixed and complex.

scholarly journals Same-Party Legislative Appointments and the Problem of Party-Switching

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-198
Author(s):  
Tyler Yeargain
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
State Legislator ◽  
Party Switching ◽  
Switching State

For half of the states and almost every territory in the United States, legislative vacancies are filled by some system of temporary appointments rather than by special elections. Most of these systems utilize “same-party” appointments to ensure continuity of representation. But few states have anticipated the problem of state legislators switching parties. Though party-switching is rare, it happens frequently enough that several state supreme courts have already interpreted same-party appointment statutes as applied to party-switchers. This Article argues for a uniform approach to the problem of party-switchers in same-party appointment systems. First, this Article reviews the current legislative appointment schemes as they operate today and analyzes each statute or constitutional provision to determine how each of them might treat a vacancy caused by a party-switching state legislator, as well as the four state supreme court decisions addressing this question of statutory interpretation. It then argues that the principles underlying same-party appointment systems support statutory amendments to clarify how party-switching state legislators are replaced.

scholarly journals Growing Pains and Other Things: The Supreme Court of Canada and the Supreme Court of the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 753-796
Author(s):  
Edward G. Hudon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Growing Pains ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
History Of

This article is in part a book review and in part a study of two institutions. In it, the author compares the origin and growth of the Supreme Court of Canada and of the Supreme Court of the United States. He uses Professors James G. Snell and Frederick Vaughan's The Supreme Court of Canada: History of the Institution as a starting point, and he compares various aspects of the two Supreme Courts. He points out similarities in the problems that the two have confronted since the beginning, and he indicates the manner in which these problems have been resolved by each.

scholarly journals Healthcare Reform Repeal Efforts in the United States in 2017: An Inquiry into Public Advocacy Efforts by Key Interest Groups

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 190-204
Author(s):  
John Hoornbeek ◽  
Bethany Lanese ◽  
Mutlaq Albugmi ◽  
Joshua Filla
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Healthcare Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Design Features ◽  
Feedback Effects

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was subjected to repeated repeal and replace efforts in the United States Congress in 2017. Attempts to repeal and replace the law failed, but penalties for not complying with its mandate that individuals purchase health insurance were removed in tax legislation passed late in the year and administrative actions taken by President Trump yielded additional concerns about the stability of the law’s reform approach and the expanded health insurance access that it created. This article explores public advocacy efforts by key interest groups from three major policy sectors—health providers, the insurance industry, and the business community—that had served as an “axis of opposition” to past American healthcare reform efforts. It identifies resource and incentive policy feedback effects that appear likely to influence these groups due to design features of the ACA and assesses whether patterns of advocacy efforts in 2017 are consistent with what might be expected if these design features had their predicted effects. Our assessment reveals patterns of interest group advocacy that are consistent with what might be expected to arise from resource and incentive based policy feedback effects, and interest group political dynamics that differ from what was in place prior to passage of the ACA. It also reveals advocacy patterns that are not well explained by resource and incentive based policy feedback effects, and—in so doing—yields insights that are relevant to the design of policy reforms and future research.

Challenges to the Impartiality of State Supreme Courts: Legitimacy Theory and “New-Style” Judicial Campaigns

2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES L. GIBSON
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Campaign Contributions ◽  
State Courts ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Institutional Legitimacy ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
Campaign Activity ◽  
Free Speech Rights

Institutional legitimacy is perhaps the most important political capital courts possess. Many believe, however, that the legitimacy of elected state courts is being threatened by the rise of politicized judicial election campaigns and the breakdown of judicial impartiality. Three features of such campaigns, the argument goes, are dangerous to the perceived impartiality of courts: campaign contributions, attack ads, and policy pronouncements by candidates for judicial office. By means of an experimental vignette embedded in a representative survey, I investigate whether these factors in fact compromise the legitimacy of courts. The survey data indicate that campaign contributions and attack ads do indeed lead to a diminution of legitimacy, in courts just as in legislatures. However, policy pronouncements, even those promising to make decisions in certain ways, have no impact whatsoever on the legitimacy of courts and judges. These results are strongly reinforced by the experiment's ability to compare the effects of these campaign factors across institutions (a state Supreme Court and a state legislature). Thus, this analysis demonstrates that legitimacy is not obdurate and that campaign activity can indeed deplete the reservoir of goodwill courts typically enjoy, even if the culprit is not the free-speech rights the U.S. Supreme Court announced in 2002.

State Supreme Courts and Public Policy: A Bibliography

1981 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
G.Alan Tarr
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
School Finance ◽  
Life Support ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
State Supreme Court

During the past decade political scientists have become increasingly aware that state supreme courts make major contributions to public policy. Various highly publicized decisions concerning, for example, school finance, the termination of life support systems, and plea bargaining have underlined the importance of state supreme court policymaking. Historical studies have documented that this policy involvement is not merely a recent phenomenon. However, the Burger Court's new federalism has invited state supreme courts to play a more active role, and many courts have availed themselves of this opportunity.Yet despite the obvious importance of state supreme court activity, research on their policymaking has lagged. In part this can be attributed to the sheer volume of cases they annually decide. Numerous law journals assist the political scientist in overcoming this difficulty by publishing annual surveys of state supreme court decisions. Listed below are journals which provide such surveys.

Protecting Free Exercise of Religion under the Indian and the United States Constitutions: the Doctrine of Essential Practices and the Centrality Test

ICL Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khagesh Gautam
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
The United States ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court

AbstractFree Exercise of Religion is a protected constitutional right under the democratic constitutions of both the biggest democracy in the world ie India and the most powerful democracy in the world ie United States of America. Despite textual similarities in the free-exercise clauses of Constitutions of both of these democracies, there is a big difference in the standards of review whereby free exercise claims are judicially reviewed by their re­spective Supreme Courts. Whereas the US Supreme Court does not give much weight to the sincerity of the religious belief and employs the ‘religion-neutral’ test, the Supreme Court of India gives due weight to the sincerity of the religious belief and employs a ‘reli­gion-central’ test known in Indian free-exercise jurisprudence as the Doctrine of Essential Practices. However, a closer examination of judicial opinions on the point discloses that sincerity of religious belief is not entirely unimportant in US free-exercise jurisprudence but still is not given the kind of importance that it is given in India - a nation that is and has historically been religiously diverse.This paper closely examines the free-exercise jurisprudence as developed by the respec­tive Supreme Courts and argues that in view of the changing religious diversity in the United States perhaps time has come to re-examine the reluctance of the American courts to give its due weightage to the sincerity of religious belief while judicially reviewing free-exercise claims. Relying on several judicial opinions of the US Supreme Court and its sub­ordinate courts in the US and by demonstrating their factual and doctrinal equivalents in the Supreme Court of India, this paper argues that free-exercise clauses of both the US and Indian Constitutions protect not just the right to believe in whichever religion an indi­vidual chooses but also acts in pursuit of religion. The belief-act distinction - an idea at the core of much of US free-exercise jurisprudence is not what is truly protected by the free-exercise clause. What is protected indeed are the acts done in pursuance of religious belief. A line has to be drawn between the acts that are sincerely done in pursuance of religion and those that are not. This line has to be drawn by the Courts on a case to case basis. And that is where US free-exercise jurisprudence would be well assisted in examining Indian free-exercise jurisprudence on the point.

State Constitutionalism and the Death Penalty

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-156
Author(s):  
Alan Rogers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts

Concerned that the United States Supreme Court's abolition of the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia (1972) would not be sustained, abolitionists turned to state supreme courts. Through their efforts, two states succeeded in realizing that goal: California, briefly, and Massachusetts, where the death penalty remains unconstitutional.

Toward A Positive Theory of State Supreme Court Decision Making

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (01) ◽  
pp. 7-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo T. Spiller ◽  
Richard G. Vanden Bergh
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The State ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Judicial Selection ◽  
State Supreme Court

State Supreme Courts have grown in importance during the last thirty years in the formation of public policy. Their judgements determine many aspects of constitutional law, tort reform, judicial selection, and campaign finance reform, among others. A vast body of literature has been developed that analyzes State Supreme Court decision making, which emphasizes the conditioning effects of the legal and institutional environment. This article expands on this previous work by incorporating the interaction of the judiciary with other government institutions, and applies the Positive Political Theory approach to law and legal institutions to the State Supreme Court. In addition, the neo-institutionalist literature of the selection process is incorporated to defend a systematic approach towards decision making. Towards that end, this article explores how judicial decisions are conditioned by institutional rules, resulting in a formal modeling of how the State Supreme Courts interact with political actors to form constitutional interpretation. This model includes the judicial selection process'retention or competitive reelection—and is extended to constitutional amendment rules, explaining how these two interact rather than acting independently. Finally, the hypothesis is tested that when State Supreme Court judges face retention elections and political preferences are homogeneous, the probability increases of observing constitutional amendment prosposals.

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