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

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  • Paul Brace
  • Brent D. Boyea

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Brace & Brent D. Boyea, 2008. "State Public Opinion, the Death Penalty, and the Practice of Electing Judges," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(2), pages 360-372, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:52:y:2008:i:2:p:360-372
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00317.x
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    Cited by:

    1. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2009. "Direkte Demokratie und Menschenrechte," CREMA Working Paper Series 2009-18, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    2. Damon Cann & Jeff Yates, 2021. "Evaluating diffuse support for state high courts among individuals with varying levels of policy agreement," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2824-2835, November.
    3. Soheil Sabriseilabi & James Williams & Mahmoud Sadri, 2022. "How Does Race Moderate the Effect of Religion Dimensions on Attitudes toward the Death Penalty?," Societies, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-11, April.
    4. Keith Carlson & Michael A. Livermore & Daniel N. Rockmore, 2020. "The Problem of Data Bias in the Pool of Published U.S. Appellate Court Opinions," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(2), pages 224-261, June.
    5. Martin Andrew D. & Hazelton Morgan L.W., 2012. "What Political Science Can Contribute to the Study of Law," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 511-529, October.
    6. Matthew D. Montgomery & Michael P. Fix & Justin T. Kingsland, 2021. "Rigid rules and slippery standards: How the nature of U.S. Supreme Court precedents influences subsequent state court treatments," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2894-2906, November.
    7. Alma Cohen & Alon Klement & Zvika Neeman, 2015. "Judicial Decision Making: A Dynamic Reputation Approach," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(S1), pages 133-159.
    8. Harden Jeffrey J., 2012. "Improving Statistical Inference with Clustered Data," Statistics, Politics and Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-30, January.
    9. Mark D. Ramirez, 2021. "Unmasking the American death penalty debate: Race, context, and citizens’ willingness to execute," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1931-1946, July.

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