State supreme courts in american democracy : probing the myths o judicial reform
By: HALL, Melinda Gann
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ArticlePublisher: 2001American Political Science Review 95, 2, p. 315-330Abstract: I address the controversy over how judges should be selected by analyzing the electoral forturnes of incumbents on supreme courts from 1980 through 1995 in the 38 states using elections to staff the bench. Court reformers argue that partisan elections fail to evidence accountability, while nonpartisan and retention elections promote indenpendence. Thus, issue-related or candidate-related forces should not be important in partisan elections, and external political donditions should not be important in nonpartisan and retention elections. Results indicate that reformers underestinmated the extent to which partisan elections have a tangible substantive component and overestimated the extent to which nonpartisan and rentention races are insulated from partisan politics and other contextual forces. On these two fundamental issues, arguments of reformers fail. Moreover, the extraordinary variations across sytems and over time in how well incumbents fare with voters, which bear directly upon the representative nature of elected courts, merit further explanation
| Item type | Current location | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Periódico | Biblioteca Graciliano Ramos | Periódico | Not for loan |
I address the controversy over how judges should be selected by analyzing the electoral forturnes of incumbents on supreme courts from 1980 through 1995 in the 38 states using elections to staff the bench. Court reformers argue that partisan elections fail to evidence accountability, while nonpartisan and retention elections promote indenpendence. Thus, issue-related or candidate-related forces should not be important in partisan elections, and external political donditions should not be important in nonpartisan and retention elections. Results indicate that reformers underestinmated the extent to which partisan elections have a tangible substantive component and overestimated the extent to which nonpartisan and rentention races are insulated from partisan politics and other contextual forces. On these two fundamental issues, arguments of reformers fail. Moreover, the extraordinary variations across sytems and over time in how well incumbents fare with voters, which bear directly upon the representative nature of elected courts, merit further explanation
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