Electoral incentives dictate that “the people's” representatives are primarily concerned with securing reelection. Can this expectation be applied to non-representative offices such as State Supreme Court justices? A majority of states use elections to choose non-policymakers such as State...

The status of child custody and adoption rights for GLBTQ individuals varies dramatically by state. This paper seeks to explain some of this variation by examining state Supreme Court decisions regarding the child rearing rights of sexual minorities. I use content analysis to code major court...

I argue that the Supreme Court should be studied as a democratic representative institution. While normative political theorists do not tend to view the Court as representative, their theorizing has produced a concept of representation that can be used a starting point for studying the Court....

In their seminal article on the historical rise of dissent activity, Walker, Dixon, and Epstein (1988) consider a number of competing hypotheses, such as the transition to a discretionary docket, changes in caseload levels, and alteration of the Courtﾒs membership, before ultimately...

This paper examines the prevalent trend of the moderation of the opinions of members of the U.S. Supreme Court as they near retirement. Across a range of legal areas, the written opinions of both traditionally conservative and liberal justices regress toward the center of the political...

While scholars have paid a great deal of attention to legislative and executive institutionalization, limited work exists on the institutionalization of judiciaries and its consequences. McGuireﾒs work (2004) examining the development of the Supreme Court reveals that the institutionalization...

The importance of racial and ethnic minorities on the bench and their influence on decision making has garnered some scholarly attention. While the normative arguments arguing for a racially diverse judiciary abound, the empirical literature on the topic at the state level is more limited and...

In this paper I build on previous research by exploring gender differences in judging on state supreme courts while controlling for ideology and institutional features. This paper provides an important contribution to the study of gender and judging by examining a large number of votes for a...

In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle (2007) a divided Court struck down the efforts of school districts to integrate schools through the use of race as a factor in school assignment. Notable in the majority and dissenting opinions was sharp disagreement about the meaning of the...

Recent trends in judicial elections, including expensive rough-and-tumble campaigns characterized by televised attack advertising and politicized discourse, are causing advocacy groups and legal scholars to condemn the practice of electing judges. This paper addresses an important aspect of this...