Representation in political institutions, including the judiciary, is an important consideration for both political scientists and citizens. What factors systematically influence diversity among judges? In particular, does the method of selection affect the relative success of political minorities in attaining a seat on the bench? The answers to these questions have substantial normative and theoretical implications. We examine judges on all state supreme and intermediate appellate courts in 1985 and 1999 to assess the influence of various structural, political, and demographic factors on judicial diversity. We demonstrate that the ability of political minorities to attain a place in the judiciary is not solely a function of any single factor. Instead, their success is influenced by a multifaceted combination of factors contingent on time and the level of the court, and these influences differ for women and for minorities.

Do newly appointed justices experience acclimation effects upon their ascent to the Supreme Court? We contend that acclimation is a process, as justices' conformation to the doctrine of stare decisis is partly a function of tenure length. We find that precedent conformance is inversely related to tenure, with newcomers following legal precedents at rates significantly greater than more tenured colleagues; however, justices slowly but surely surrender to relatively unfettered judicial power at the Supreme Court, as attitudes increasingly dominate decisionmaking. While votes adhering to precedent are more prevalent for newcomers, all justices are overwhelmingly influenced by their own ideologies, confirming the inability of the legal model to influence or explain this aspect of judicial behavior. Our results also indicate that the proclivity of prior research to specify an express period of acclimation may be flawed. Instead, acclimation is a dynamic process, ever evolving over justices' entire duration of service.

Scholars have been intrigued by the abrupt change in the rate of nonconsensual opinions that the Supreme Court has published over time, which substantially increased beginning with the battles concerning the court's New Deal transition in the 1930s. Notwithstanding, none of the prior studies on this topic has made any link, whether theoretical or empirical, between the Supreme Court's issuance of these special opinions and the justices' policy preferences. We utilize fractional cointegration to examine the relationship between consensus, agendas, and decisionmaking on the Supreme Court. We find that there is a systematic interrelation between the justices' policy preferences and their issuance of nonconsensual opinions that is dependent upon the policy agenda before the court. In turn, this connection influences the court's policy outcomes, demonstrating that the justices' behavior regarding nonconsensual opinion writing is a classic example of judicial policymaking.