This article presents findings that suggest that while partisan and retention elections promote strategic retirement by state supreme court justices, nonpartisan elections do not.
This empirical study analyzes state supreme court elections from 1980–1995 and finds that court reformers underestimate the substantive component of partisan elections and overestimate the degree to which nonpartisan and retention elections are insulated from partisan politics.
This article examines 208 judicial elections from 1990–2000, finding that voters appear to evaluate challengers’ qualifications and that experienced challengers lessen the electoral security of incumbents.
Article examines whether judges decide cases based strictly on law or whether they fit the law to their preferences; and it argues that, while the options present a false dichotomy, there is reason to prefer the law based model beyond court legitimacy.
This article examines the political realities that cause state judicial elections to fail and proposes a six-point long-term strategy aimed at overcoming popular support for judicial elections, gradually phasing elections out of existence, and replacing them with an appointed mode of selection similar to the federal system.
This article examines whether a candidate’s sex influences the outcomes in judicial elections.
This empirical study examines the contributions of incumbency, occupational ballot labels, campaign spending, newspaper and bar association endorsements, voter information pamphlets, and the ethnic and sexual voting cues provided by candidate surnames to the outcomes of the 123 contested primary and run-off elections held for California’s major trial court from 1976 to 1980.
This article argues that while judicial elections have their defects, alternative judicial selection methods often suffer from similar flaws, and concludes that judicial elections are the best way to choose judges because they have one advantage over other methods: accountability.
This empirical study analyzes the decisions of all the judges of the highest court for every state for the years 1998, 1999, and 2000, and concludes that in terms of effort, skill, and independence, appointed judges do not perform at a higher level than their elected counterparts
This article argues that opponents of judicial elections have made erroneous empirical claims and that judicial elections are efficacious mechanisms that enhance the quality of democracy and create an inextricable link between citizens and the judiciary.