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How State Judicial Selection Methods May Influence Views of US Supreme Court Nominees

Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Christopher N. Krewson  and
Ryan J. Owens
Christopher N. Krewson*
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University, USA
Ryan J. Owens
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, USA
*
Contact the corresponding author, Christopher N. Krewson, at chris_krewson@byu.edu.
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Abstract

We examine whether state judicial selection methods influence people’s evaluations of US Supreme Court nominees. We find that people from appointing states use nominee characteristics in their evaluations differently than people in electing states. Those from appointing states appear to be more concerned with traditional legal factors, while people from electing states appear to be slightly less concerned with them. Although the importance varies from characteristic to characteristic, state judicial selection system has a broad role in shaping how people evaluate judicial nominees. These findings counsel further research on judicial institutions and the public’s expectations of judges.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Fall 2022 , pp. 189 - 212
Copyright
© 2022 Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

Replication materials are available in the JLC Dataverse at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/U7LLAK.

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