Judges face retention elections in over a third of US state courts of last resort and numerous lower courts. According to conventional wisdom, these elections engender judicial independence and decrease democratic accountability. We argue that in the context of modern judicial campaigns,...

This paper adds to the existing literature on en banc rehearings in two ways. First, I incorporate theoretical results from the literature on Supreme Court certiorari decisions and argue that the ideological direction of panel decisions should influence the probability of en banc rehearing only...