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Judicial Reform as a Tug of War: How Ideological Differences Between Politicians and the Bar Explain Attempts at Judicial Reform

Posted by on Tuesday, November 28, 2017 in Volume 70, Volume 70, Number 6.

Judicial Reform as a Tug of War

ABSTRACT

What predicts attempts at judicial reform? We develop a broad, generalizable framework that both explains and predicts attempts at judicial reform. Specifically, we explore the political tug of war created by the polarization between the bar and political actors, in tandem with existing judicial selection mechanisms. The more liberal the bar and the more conservative political actors, the greater the incentive political actors will have to introduce ideology into judicial selection. (And, vice versa, the more conservative the bar and the more liberal political actors, the greater incentive political actors will have to introduce ideology into judicial selection.) Understanding this dynamic, we argue, is key to both explaining and predicting attempts at judicial reform. For example, under most ideological configurations, conservatives will, depending on how liberal they perceive the bar to be, push reform efforts toward partisan elections and executive appointments, while liberals will work to maintain merit-oriented commissions. We explore the contours of this predictive framework with three in-depth, illustrative case studies: Florida in 2001, Kansas in the 2010s, and North Carolina in 2016.

AUTHORS

Adam Bonica

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Stanford University

Maya Sen

Associate Professor, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University