Judicial Elections: Just Like Any Other Election?

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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An Experimental Investigation of How Judicial Elections Affect Public Faith in the Judicial System

Law & Social Inquiry ◽

10.1111/lsi.12159 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 41 (01) ◽

pp. 37-60 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Anthony J. Nownes ◽

Colin Glennon

Keyword(s):

Selection Method ◽

Public Perceptions ◽

Judicial System ◽

State Courts ◽

State Court ◽

Selection Methods ◽

Institutional Legitimacy ◽

Judicial Elections ◽

Administration Of Justice ◽

The Impact

Judicial scholars have often speculated about the impact of elections on the administration of justice in the state courts. Yet relatively little research has concerned itself with public perceptions of state court selection methods. Of particular interest is the concept of legitimacy. Do elections negatively affect public perceptions of judicial legitimacy? Bonneau and Hall (2009) and Gibson (2012) answer this question with an emphatic “No.” Judicial elections, these studies show, are not uniquely troublesome for perceptions of institutional legitimacy. This article aims to extend the findings of Bonneau and Hall and Gibson via a laboratory experiment on the effects of elections on public perceptions of judicial legitimacy. In the end, we find that because elections preempt the use of the other main selection method—appointment—they actually enhance perceptions of judicial legitimacy rather than diminish them.

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