Several countries practice a system where laymen, who lack legal education, participate in the judicial decision making. Yet, little is known about their potential influence on the court rulings. In Sweden lay judges (namndeman) are affiliated with the political parties and appointed in...

We use NOMINATE (Nominal Three Step Estimation) (Poole and Rosenthal, 1983, 1997) to estimate ideal pointsfor all Supreme Court Justices in Brazil from 2002 to 2012. Based on these estimated preferences we identify the nature of the two main dimensions along which disagreements tend to occur in...

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...

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...

Anecdotal evidence often points to aging as a cause for reduced work performance. This paper provides empirical evidence on this issue in a context where performance is measurable and there is variation in mandatory retirement policies: U.S. state supreme courts. We find that introducing...