This paper examines Supreme Court confirmation hearings and their role in the political process. In particular, we are interested here in exploring the relationship between nominee candor and the Judiciary Committee's votes. Do senators support nominees who are more forthcoming and vote against...

Supreme Court justices often vote along ideological lines. Is this due to a genuinely different interpretation of the law, or does it reflect justices' desire to resolve politically charged legal questions in accordance with their personal views? To learn more about the nature of decision-making...

Proponents of judicial elections and related campaign activities emphasize existing First Amendment jurisprudence as well as similarities linking publicly-elected state judges and other publicly-elected state officials. Opponents focus on judicial campaign contributions' corrosive effects,...

Supreme Court justices employ law clerks to help them perform their duties. We study whether these clerks influence how justices vote in the cases they hear. We exploit the timing of the clerkship hiring process to link variation in clerk ideology to variation in judicial voting. To measure...

While longstanding theories of political behavior argue that voters do not possess sufficient political knowledge to hold their elected representatives accountable, recent revisionist studies challenge this view, arguing that voters can both follow how their representatives vote and use that...