3. Campaign Advertising in State Supreme Court Elections

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-94
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
Campaign Advertising

scholarly journals The Pennsylvania 2015 State Supreme Court Election in Comparative Perspective

Commonwealth ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenna Becker Kane
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Campaign Spending ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Judicial Selection ◽  
High Court ◽  
Judicial Elections ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Campaign Advertising

Judicial candidates and outside groups spent a record $15.8 million in a 2015 election that decided the partisan balance of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Adding to the record-­setting election was a barrage of televised attack advertising in which outside interests spent over $4 million to influence the outcome of the high court race. This article places the 2015 Pennsylvania Supreme Court election in comparative perspective to assess whether or not the campaign fundraising, campaign spending, and campaign advertising in this race was as “historic” as commonly claimed. Interestingly, when compared with other Pennsylvania high court races, the 2015 race was not a watershed election for candidate fundraising, especially when fundraising totals are averaged per candidate. Neither was the tone and tenor of campaign advertising in the 2015 Pennsylvania race outside the trend of contemporary judicial campaigns in other states, which have seen a marked increase in televised attack advertising by outside groups that often target candidates as soft on crime. Overall, the cost and tone of the 2015 Pennsylvania Supreme Court race appears to be a part of wider trends in contemporary judicial elections and very much in line with the cost of high court races in Pennsylvania over the last decade. The article concludes by surveying empirical evidence on the efficacy of judicial elections and assesses Pennsylvania’s prospects for reforming its method of judicial selection.

A Bottom-Up Account of State Supreme Court Opinion Writing

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-114
Author(s):  
Elisha Carol Savchak ◽  
Jennifer Barnes Bowie
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
Opinion Writing

scholarly journals The Complicated Business of State Supreme Court Elections: An Empirical Perspective

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Heise
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Campaign Contributions ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Judicial Elections ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Judicial Outcomes

Proponents of judicial elections and related campaign activities emphasize existing First Amendment jurisprudence as well as similarities linking publicly-elected state judges and other publicly-elected state officials. Opponents focus on judicial campaign contributions’ corrosive effects, including their potential to unduly influence judicial outcomes. Using a comprehensive data set of 2,345 business-related cases decided by state supreme courts across all fifty states between 2010–12, judicial election critics, including Professor Joanna Shepherd, emphasize the potential for bias and find that campaign contributions from business sources to state supreme court judicial candidates corresponded with candidates’ pro-business votes as justices. While Shepherd’s main findings generally replicate, additional (and alternative) analyses introduce new findings that raise complicating wrinkles for Shepherd’s strong normative claims. Findings from this study illustrate that efforts to influence judicial outcomes are not the exclusive domain of business interests. That is, judicial campaign contributions from non- (and anti-) business interests increase the probability of justices’ votes favoring non-business interests. As a result, critiques of judicial elections cannot properly rely exclusively on the influence of business interests. Moreover, that both business and non-business interests can successfully influence judicial outcomes through campaign contributions point in different (and possibly conflicting) normative directions. On the one hand, even if one agrees that the judicial branch qualitatively differs from the political and executive branches in terms of assessing campaign contributions’ proper role, that the potential to influence judicial outcomes is available to any interest group (willing to invest campaign contributions) complicates popular critiques of judicial elections. On the other hand, the same empirical findings also plausibly strengthen critiques of judicial elections, especially for those who view the judicial domain differently than other political domains.

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