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The Influence of Legislative Reappointment on State Supreme Court Decision-Making

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
*
Thomas Gray, University of Virginia, 1540 Jefferson Park Ave., Charlottesville, VA 22903-1738, USA. Email: tg5ec@virginia.edu
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Abstract

Most state supreme court justices have time-bound terms that require them to be reappointed or reelected after a certain amount of time. In three American states, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia, the legislature has the sole power to retain justices. Legislatures, and their specialized judiciary committees, are well positioned to monitor judicial behavior and can reject retention for justices who are unacceptable. This turns the legislature's oversight authority into influence over policy making by justices who still need to be reappointed to additional terms. But some justices (co-partisans) are insulated from this influence by their connections to the majority party, which substantially increases the likelihood of their retention. I show that, between 1995 and 2014, justices appointed by the minority party who were eligible for a new term voted more in line with the preferences of their legislature than those who were no longer eligible for a new term due to mandatory or voluntary retirement. No similar effect is found among appointees of the majority party. To support my argument that it is the legislature's reappointment authority that gives them this power, I conduct a placebo test to show that governors in these states enjoy no comparable influence on reappointment-seeking justices. This legislative influence represents a substantial limitation on judicial independence.

Keywords

judicial behaviorjudicial politicsjudicial selectionlegislative politicslegislative/judicial interaction
Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 275 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017

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