State Public Opinion, the Death Penalty, and the Practice of Electing Judges

Abstract

Do state supreme courts act impartially or are they swayed by public opinion? Do judicial elections influence judge behavior? To date these questions have received little direct attention due to the absence of comparable public opinion data in states and obstacles to collecting data necessary for comprehensive analysis of state supreme court outcomes. Advances in measurement, data archiving, and methodology now allow for consideration of the link between public opinion and judicial outcomes in the American states. The analysis presented considers public opinion's influence on the composition of courts (indirect effects) and its influence on judge votes in capital punishment cases (direct effects). In elective state supreme courts, public support for capital punishment influences the ideological composition of those courts and judge willingness to uphold death sentences. Notably, public support for capital punishment has no measurable effect on nonelective state supreme courts. On the highly salient issue of the death penalty, mass opinion and the institution of electing judges systematically influence court composition and judge behavior.

Electing to Trust: An Exploration of the Relationship between Public Opinion and Localized Processes on Judicial Selection

“…This finding is supported by Gibson et al's (2008) Thus, while the use of political campaigns in judicial races may tarnish the image of state and local judges and thus negatively affect popular evaluations of the judiciary, it is also plausible, as Bonneau and Hall (2009) argue, that the use of elections as a judicial selection method may have a long-term effect in increasing popular support by giving the public greater input into their state and local judicial systems and by creating judiciaries that operate in greater congruence with public opinion. To this point, Brace and Boyea (2008) find that the use of elections as a means of judicial selection translates into the public having both direct-by affecting judicial behavior in anticipation of upcoming elections-and indirect-by affecting the composition of courts-effects on state judiciaries in cases involving capital punishment, while courts in states that did not utilize judicial elections exhibited no such popular responsiveness in death penalty cases.…”

Institutional Effects on the Careers of State Supreme Court Justices

“…With this view of risk in mind, our theoretical expectations are based in part on an institutional perspective (Bonneau andCann 2011, 2015;Brace and Boyea 2008;Hall 2001) and on conventional wisdom, both of which interestingly coincide here. From an institutional perspective, the several methods of selection should produce variable levels of risk of removal in predictable ways, based on the unique institutional arrangements of each system (Curry and Hurwitz N.d.).…”

“…We believe that the length of the judicial careers, when aggregated, is associated with judicial accountability. The literature provides abundant examples of the influence of selection systems on judicial outcomes, particularly with respect to decision making (e.g., Brace and Boyea 2008;Brace and Hall 1990;Hall 1995). Moving beyond decision making, we are 2 interested in studying observable differences in judicial careers contingent on methods of selection and retention.…”

“…(Brace and Boyea 2008). While the distance score is compiled using different particularized measures, we feel it specifically taps our hypothesis, namely, that as justices become more ideologically distant from the body responsible for their retention (be it the public, the governor, or the legislature), they will be more likely to leave the bench.…”

Representation in State Supreme Courts

“…Specifically, the impact of public preferences, whether measured as state ideology (e.g., Brace and Hall 1997;Brace, Hall, and Langer 2001) or as aggregate opinion on specific issues (e.g., Brace and Boyea 2008) is stronger when justices are elected.…”