Measuring Judicial Ideology Using Law Clerk Hiring

Bonica, Adam; Chilton, Adam S.; Goldin, Jacob; Rozema, Kyle; Sen, Maya

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2808200

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 130 publications

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“…In this vein, Bonica et al (2017) use the contribution-based scores from Bonica (2014) and impute scores for federal judges based on the ideology of their law clerks, as revealed by the clerks' political contributions. Each year federal judges hire several clerks to assist them in drafting opinions, doing legal research, and evaluating the arguments presented at oral arguments.…”

Section: Estimating Judicial Ideology Using Campaign Contributions Estimating Judicial Ideology Using Campaign Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating Judicial Ideology

Bonica

Sen

2021

Journal of Economic Perspectives

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We review the substantial literature on estimating judicial ideology, from the US Supreme Court to the lowest state court. As a way to showcase the strengths and drawbacks of various measures, we further analyze trends in judicial polarization within the US federal courts. Our analysis shows substantial gaps in the ideology of judges appointed by Republican Presidents versus those appointed by Democrats. Similar to trends in Congressional polarization, the increasing gap is mostly driven by a rightward movement by judges appointed by Republicans. We conclude by noting important avenues for future research in the study of the ideology of judges.

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Section: Estimating Judicial Ideology Using Campaign Contributions Estimating Judicial Ideology Using Campaign Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating Judicial Ideology

Bonica

Sen

2021

Journal of Economic Perspectives

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“…Later came applications of item response modelling techniques that seek to infer the judges’ latent ideological preferences from their observed voting behaviour (Epstein et al., 2012b; Martin and Quinn, 2002). Most recently, researchers have turned to political donations (Bonica and Sen, 2017) and law clerk hiring (Bonica et al., 2017).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judicial ideology in economic cases: Evidence from the General Court of the European Union

Wijtvliet

Dyèvre

2020

European Union Politics

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We contribute new empirical evidence on the influence of ideology on the behaviour of European Union judges. As votes and other common proxies for judicial preferences are unavailable, we ask 46 competition law experts to rate the ideology of 51 judges who have served on the General Court of the European Union. The average ratings are then used to explain the outcome of competition and state aid cases (N = 655). We find that, consistent with research on United States courts, the pro-business score of the panel median is a significant predictor of General Court decisions in competition and state aid cases. We find less conclusive evidence for the influence of Europhilia. While showing that attitudes towards private business may matter more than Europhilia in economic cases, our analysis also suggests that expert ratings constitute a viable and promising alternative in settings where other measurement methods are unavailable.

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“…In the federal courts, however, there is a dataset on clerkships collected by Bonica et al (2017). These authors have kindly shared their data on clerk law schools.…”

Section: The Role Of Clerksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Data on clerks is not available for state supreme courts. But it is available for a large sample of judges in the federal courts for the years 1995 through 2004, collected by Bonica et al (2017). We used the information on clerk law school attendance from this dataset.…”

Section: A5 Clerk Quality and Judge Agementioning

confidence: 99%

Mandatory Retirement for Judges Improved Performance on U.S. State Supreme Courts

Ash¹,

MacLeod²

2020

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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 mandatory retirement reduces the average age of working judges and improves court performance, as measured by output (number of published opinions) and legal impact (number of forward citations to those opinions). Consistent with aging effects as a contributing factor, we find that older judges do about the same amount of work as younger judges, but that work is lower-quality as measured by citations. However, the effect of mandatory retirement on performance is much larger than what would be expected from the change in the age distribution, suggesting that the presence of older judges reduces the performance of younger judges.

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Measuring Judicial Ideology Using Law Clerk Hiring

Abstract: Volokh, and seminar participants at the University of Chicago Law School and at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. We are grateful to Dan Katz for providing data on the identities of district court and circuit court clerks.

Cited by 14 publications

References 130 publications

Estimating Judicial Ideology

Estimating Judicial Ideology

Judicial ideology in economic cases: Evidence from the General Court of the European Union

Mandatory Retirement for Judges Improved Performance on U.S. State Supreme Courts

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