The Politicization of State Judicial Elections: |
The Effects of New-Style Campaigns on State Court Legitimacy |
Project Summary: |
| A “Perfect Storm” has taken place in elections for courts of law resort (Supreme Courts) in the American states. The ingredients of the storm include a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing state judges to make policy statements during campaigns for judicial offices, the growing economic, political, and social importance of state judicial systems (especially in the context of such highly politicized issues as “tort reform,” capital punishment, gay marriages, and possibly in the near future, abortion), and the vast sums of money being invested in judicial campaigns these days ($21 million in 2004). Campaigns for state Supreme Courts have changed massively in just the last few years. This Perfect Storm shows no signs of dissipating as it continues to deluge state after state. Both legal pundits and social scientists predict that the deadly consequence of this new style of judicial campaigning will be the loss of legitimacy for state legal systems and courts. As citizens come to see courts as not unique — that is, as ordinary political institutions — the impartiality of the courts will be questioned, undermining the basic legitimacy of these institutions. Without legitimacy, courts cannot perform the roles assigned to them by democratic theory. Many worry that the inherent tension between judicial accountability and judicial independence will be exacerbated by this new-style of judicial election, to the profound detriment of state courts. The specific purpose of this project is to test the hypothesis that this politicized character of judicial campaigning influences perceptions of the legitimacy of law and courts. Based on a three-wave panel survey of a representative sample of ordinary people (in one or more states – see below), this project will examine whether change in attitudes toward law and courts (from t 1 to t 3) is a function of exposure to politicized judicial campaign advertisements (t 2). The project takes advantage of the relatively new data bases of actual campaign ads (distributed by the Brennan Center at NYU) so that I will know (at t 2) the nature of the advertising content to which voters are potentially exposed (in 2004 there were 42,096 airings of 181 ads in 15 state judicial elections). Thus, this project is an unprecedented effort to test hypotheses about the origins of the legitimacy of state law and courts.
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Proposal’s Intellectual Merit: |
Legitimacy Theory is one of the most important theories we have for understanding the role of courts in democratic societies. The theory asserts that courts are especially dependent upon legitimacy for their effectiveness (since they have neither the power of the “purse” nor of the “sword”). But legitimacy is fragile, and its origins are poorly understood. Current theorizing posits a “positivity bias,” which means that increased attentiveness to courts (for whatever reason) results in greater exposure to powerful symbols of judicial legitimacy. But what if increased attention to court results in exposure to campaign “attack” ads impugning the impartiality of candidates for state supreme courts? Undoubtedly, little “positivity” can be found in such ads. The new-style of judicial campaigning provides a propitious context for further development of theories of the origin of judicial legitimacy, in the “laboratories” that are the American states.
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Proposal’s Broader Impact: |
Beyond the ordinary contributions to infrastructure (e.g., graduate student training), this project will make the data collected available to the scholarly community with very little embargo period. In addition, debates currently rage (and threaten to intensify) over many aspects of selecting judges by elections. This project will yield much needed empirical evidence on the consequences of electing judges, within the “Perfect Storm” climate in the U.S. today.
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Budget: |
As an economy measure, this proposal budgets for research in only a single state. My strong preference is to execute this project in multiple states, taking advantage, for instance, of the varia-bility in state selection systems (partisan, non-partisan, Missouri plan), and/or the role of incumbency in the elections. It might even be desirable to field the project in a state where judicial elections have not yet become politicized (e.g., in 2004, in Washington state, $56,221 was spent on advertising, compared to $6,943,504 in Ohio). Since this proposal contemplates an Advisory Committee to assist in selecting the state(s) on which the research will focus, it will be easy to work with the Law and Social Sciences Program Director once the amount of funding (if any) is determined.
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