Are Judges Political?: An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary

by Cass R. Sunstein, David Schkade, Lisa Ellman

Overview

"Over the past two decades, the United States has seen an intense debate about the composition of the federal judiciary. Are judges "activists"? Should they stop "legislating from the bench"? Are they abusing their authority? Or are they protecting fundamental rights, in a way that is indispensable in a free society? Are Judges Political? cuts through the noise by looking at what judges actually do. Drawing on a unique data set consisting of thousands of judicial votes, Cass Sunstein and his colleagues analyze the influence of ideology on judicial voting, principally in the courts of appeal. They focus on two questions: Do judges appointed by Republican Presidents vote differently from Democratic appointees in ideologically contested cases? And do judges vote differently depending on the ideological leanings of the other judges hearing the same case? After examining votes on a broad range of issues—including abortion, affirmative action, and capital punishment—the authors do more than just confirm that Democratic and Republican appointees often vote in different ways. They inject precision into an all-too-often impressionistic debate by quantifying this effect and analyzing the conditions under which it holds. This approach sometimes generates surprising results: under certain conditions, for example, Democrat-appointed judges turn out to have more conservative voting patterns than Republican appointees. As a general rule, ideology should not and does not affect legal judgments. Frequently, the law is clear and judges simply implement it, whatever their political commitments. But what happens when the law is unclear? Are Judges Political? addresses this vital question.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815733171
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	06/08/2006
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

What People are Saying About This

Frank B. Cross

"This is a significant book. The judiciary decides many important policy questions in the United States, and in practice the circuit court judiciary is much more important than the Supreme Court. This is evident by the great and growing press and political attention to judicial nominees. ARE JUDGES POLITICAL? greatly informs the debate, with its empirical findings and its discussion of their pragmatic significance."
—Herbert D. Kelleher Centennial Professor of Business Law at the University of Texas-Austin

Lee Epstein

"Not only is this a solid piece of research, it also does a remarkable job of translating complex ideas-long floating around in the social sciences-into prose accessible to a broad audience. This is an important service. Plus, the book couldn't come at a better time. Senators (and presidents), for the most part, understand the ideological component of judging but the public seems to need a reminder. ARE JUDGES POLITICAL? provides just that."
—Beatrice Kuhn Professor of Law at Northwestern University

Jeffrey A. Segal

"ARE JUDGES POLITICAL? is thoughtful and careful. It is a terrific empirical introduction to the politics of judicial decisionmaking, an area that is capturing the imagination of many in the legal academy. The analysis of panel effects, which appear to be as large as partisan effects, is especially interesting."
—Stony Brook University, coauthor (with Lee Epstein) of ADVICE AND CONSENT: THE POLITICS OF JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS

Editorial Reviews

Sunstein (jurisprudence & political science, Univ. of Chicago; Why Societies Need Dissent), David Schkade (Rady Sch. of Management, Univ. of California, San Diego; contributing author, Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide), Lisa M. Ellman (associate, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw), and Andres Sawicki (law clerk, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit) have analyzed 6,408 published three-judge panel decisions and the 19,234 associated votes of individual judges, all dating from 1995 through 2004. The cases involve issues of public interest, including abortion, capital punishment, eminent domain, affirmative action, civil rights, sex discrimination, and environmental policy. Their sample set substantiates the prevalence of ideological voting, ideological dampening, and ideological amplification. The authors conclude that a judge's ideological tendency can be predicted by the party of the appointing president. They also note that a judge's ideological tendency is likely to be dampened if he or she is sitting with two judges of a different political party and amplified if he or she is sitting with two judges from the same political party. Clearly, variations in panel composition lead to dramatically different outcomes. Extrapolating from a broad base of social science evidence that like-minded people will, together, tend to go to extremes, the authors conclude that like-minded judges also go to extremes. Recommended for academic and law libraries, as well as court administrators and administrative judges who strive to maintain nonpartisanship on the bench.-Philip Y. Blue, New York State Supreme Court Criminal Branch Law Lib., First Judicial Dist., New York Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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