Judicial Attributes and Sentencing-Deviation Cases: Do Sex, Race, and Politics Matter?

Latino Judges on the Federal District Court: ¿Cómo Deciden?

“…Recent research has highlighted how the race and gender of the judge have an impact on cases which involve plaintiffs of the same race or issues that prime the judge’s identity (Boyd, 2016; Chew & Kelley, 2012; Goelzhauser, 2011). The role of Latinos on the bench has been overlooked as more emphasis has been placed on the Black/White racial divide (Collins & Moyer, 2008; Farhang & Wawro, 2004; Mustard, 2001; Scherer, 2004; Tiede, Carp, & Manning, 2010). Continuing research has highlighted how personal characteristics of judges affect their decisions.…”

“…The relationship between race and judicial decision-making is common in the literature (Badas & Stauffer, 2018; A. Cohen & Yang, 2018; Collins & Moyer, 2008; Grossman, Gazal-Ayal, Pimentel, & Weinstein, 2016; Kastellec, 2013; Mustard, 2001; Scherer, 2004; Scherer & Curry, 2010; Tiede et al, 2010; Walker & Barrow, 1985). The consistent findings have been that non-White judges tend to be more sympathetic to minority defendants, more receptive to discrimination claims and affirmative action, and generally less punitive in their sentencing (Harris & Sen, 2019; Kastellec, 2013; Scherer, 2004).…”

“…The Carp-Manning Database uses published decisions and has some potential shortcomings. 8 Although there is reason for caution, recent projects using published decisions for purposes of studying race on judicial decision-making have found that their results do not differ from randomly drawn selections of unpublished cases from other sources (Tiede et al, 2010 see also, Rowland & Carp, 1996).…”

“…The potential sample bias is that this data set includes 115,000 cases of the entire population, which is unknown, but probably measured in the millions. The judges’ choice to supply the written document and the decision of West Publishing to include it in their Federal Supplement pose some risk of sample bias; however, multiple tests have shown that the unpublished cases do not dramatically differ in their outcomes (Rowland & Carp, 1996; Tiede, Carp, & Manning, 2010). The evidence suggests that the choice to publish is not related to the ideological predisposition of the judge; however, there is evidence that the type of education and the quality of the written decision do affect the decision to publish (Merritt & Brudney, 2001; Swenson, 2004).…”

Judges on Trial

“… 1. Because the focus of the present study is on the influence of judicial background characteristics in the sentencing of criminal cases, studies of appellate case outcomes (e.g., Collins & Moyer, 2007; Nagel, 1961; Tiede, Carp, & Manner, 2010; Walker & Barrow, 1985), federal magistrate outcomes (Kulik et al, 2003), State Supreme Court outcomes (e.g., Songer & Crews-Meyer, 2000; Songer & Tabrizi, 1999), and Federal Supreme Court outcomes (e.g., Tate, 1981) are omitted, as are the few studies examining aggregate district-level characteristics (e.g., Schanzenbach, 2005; Ward et al, 2009). The factors reported in Table 1 represent the most frequently investigated background characteristics of sentencing judges. …”