This empirical study of Kansas trial judges—some of whom are chosen by competitive partisan elections and some of whom are chosen by noncompetitive retention elections—concludes that electoral competitiveness motivates trial judges to sentence criminal offenders more harshly.
This book thoroughly analyzes all statewide elections held from 1948 to 1974 for justices of state courts of last resort in nonsouthern states and concludes that non-elective judicial selection systems have not dramatically improved the quality of the bench and that partisan judicial elections go a long way toward achieving their accountability goal.
This article discusses the 1976 Texas Supreme Court election, in which voters chose a candidate who claimed that he took his instructions from God over an established judge with bar association endorsements, and argues that voter ignorance about judges has negative consequences for judicial accountability.
This article argues that scholars should move beyond the accountability versus independence debate in judicial election issues to pursue direct measures of the quality of court activities, using a national survey of state court judges to show that those who serve in states with merit-based or appointment systems view the quality of justice in their state more favorably than do those in election system states.
This empirical study of state high court abortion decisions between 1980 and 2006 concludes that judges chosen by nonpartisan election are more likely to issue popular decisions than judges chosen by partisan elections.