Court Review: Volume 39, Issue 1 - The White Decision in the Court of Opinion: Views of Judges and the General Public (original) (raw)
Related papers
Campaign Contributions and Judicial Behavior
American Review of Politics, 2002
Many states select judges using competitive elections. Proponents of appointment plans contend that judicial candidates may be tempted to grant favors to lawyers who donate to their campaigns, thus compromising the independence of the judiciary. I contend that previous studies have failed to rigorously test the hypothesis that campaign contributions directly affect judicial decision-making. Using data from the 1998 term of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, I show that lawyers who make campaign contributions are no more likely to win cases than lawyers who do not. Furthermore, the data show that judges who are faced by lawyers who contributed large amounts to their campaigns are more likely to recuse themselves.
Social Science Research Network, 2010
This article is an empirical investigation of the relation between campaign contributions and the ability of elected judges to remain impartial in their rulings. Its principal aim is to assess the risk to impartiality that unrecused rulings in favor of contributors may entail. The tense if not conflictual relationship between campaign support and judicial detachment became a national issue in 2009 when the Supreme Court ruled, for the first time, in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., that a state judge's refusal to disqualify himself after receiving extraordinary campaign support from a litigant violated the Due Process Clause of the Constitution. The present study, building upon the approach charted in Caperton, focuses in depth upon one state supreme court's experience with contributor cases. The study follows the voting behavior of the seven Justices of the Louisiana Supreme Court (as constituted in 2006) over a 14-year period. The carefully checked database, consisting of more than 10,000 entries derived from 177 cases involving contributors, presents striking insights about the risks involved in unrecused voting. The entire database is included with the article. Far from undermining Caperton's thesis, it demonstrates that far smaller contributions also create a risk of actual bias and that the relative size of a donation, in comparison to overall campaign funds and expenditures, is not a necessary component of the risk. The valueadded of this empirical contribution to the national issue is essentially threefold. First, it lays out a detailed factual tableau concerning the size, scope and timing of contributions. Here is a mine of vital information that may serve as a predicate for analysis and reform. Second, in line with the "risk" calculus charted in Caperton, the article presents statistical measurements and new methods of comparison to gauge the likelihood of actual bias in judicial voting behavior. The * Thomas Pickles Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Eason Weinmann Center of Comparative Law. The views expressed here are entirely my own and have no relation to those of Tulane University, the Tulane Law School, or the Eason Weinmann Center of Comparative Law. This work is dedicated with affection and pride to every law student I have been privileged to teach. It is also dedicated to a special band of colleagues whose loyalty to me and concern for this issue have been my strength and inspiration. I wish to express my gratitude to John Levendis for his friendship, advice and assistance in recalculating the results for this study. Naturally I alone bear responsibility for any mistakes that may remain. Brought to you by | University of North Dakota Authenticated Download Date | 5/19/15 2:39 AM statistical calculations based on the data were verified and replicated by the Center for Empirical Research in the Law in St. Louis. Third, it carries the analysis beyond the relatively easy Caperton facts and examines the risk factor in the everyday cases before the courts. Thus, it addresses the typical and more difficult questions needing to be discussed and dealt with in the future, whether by the Supreme Court in revisiting the constitutional issue or by state legislatures, state courts and professional bodies in their reform efforts.
Repeat Campaign Donors and State Supreme Court Decision Making
Using data from Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, Texas and West Virginia we seek to determine whether the association between the votes of elected judges and the preferences of donors to their judicial campaigns is stronger when the donor is a repeat contributor. We also investigate whether the amount of money given and the level of electoral competition faced by a judge matter for the relationship between contributions and votes. We find evidence that repeat donors are treated differently than one-shot donors by judges and that electoral competition modifies this relationship in expected ways.
The Effects of Judicial Campaign Activity on the Legitimacy of Courts: A Survey-based Experiment
Political Research Quarterly, 2011
The purpose of this article is to investigate the consequences of judicial campaign activity for the perceived legitimacy of the Pennsylvania judiciary. The authors find that politicized campaign ads do detract from court support, although they find practically no difference between traditional campaign ads (e.g., presenting endorsements from groups) and strong attack ads. But this finding must be understood within the context of the 2007 Pennsylvania election increasing court support for all respondents, even those exposed to the most politicized ad content. Being exposed to politicized ads seems to retard the benefits of elections but does not eliminate them.
Does Public Financing Affect Judicial Behavior? Evidence From the North Carolina Supreme Court
American Politics Research
Many observers are concerned that campaign contributions could affect the decisions of elected judges. However, the empirical correlation between contributions and judicial decisions is consistent with two different explanations of judicial behavior: (a) money influences judges; or (b) contributors choose to support candidates with a similar philosophical or legal perspective. In this paper, we take advantage of North Carolina's shift to a voluntary public finance system for state Supreme Court candidates to obtain more credible estimates of the contributions-behavior relationship. Applying a difference-indifferences research design, we provide evidence that justices who opted into public financing became relatively less favorable toward attorney donors. We also find partial support for our hypothesis that participating justices became more moderate in their voting patterns. Taken together, these findings suggest that public financing reduced responsiveness to donors among participating justices.
2011
The system of privately financed elections of judges in most states across the country has long been controversial, with both the scholarship and advocacy relating to this subject directed toward identifying the problems of public perception and potential for biased decisions and then focusing on solutions that range from merit selection to public campaign financing to recusal. The Supreme Court's decision in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. addresses the problem by finding a due process violation when a contribution or donation is likely to have a "significant and disproportionate influence" on the judge's election. At the same time, the Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC opens the door to unfettered corporate support for (or opposition to) judicial candidates. This essay examines from a social science perspective the potential for campaign contributions to undermine judicial impartiality as a result of unconscious operation of the principles of reciprocity and denial. The author concludes that these principles combine to create a probability that judges will be influenced by campaign support from lawyers and parties appearing before them, even if the amounts of money involved are not "significant and disproportionate." Thus, reliance on the judge's decision to recuse-under almost any standard-will likely be inadequate to combat that influence. In states that do not abandon judicial elections, the potential impact of the reciprocity principle might be mitigated by rules preventing assignment of a case to a judge who has received contributions from a party or counsel, by requiring judges to make public at the commencement of consideration of any case or appeal any donations or contributions by parties or counsel, and possibly by a statement that such contributions will not affect the judge's impartiality.