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Are Judges Political?: An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary
by: Cass R. Sunstein, David Schkade, Lisa M. Ellman, Andres Sawicki

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 347.7314
EAN: 9780815782346
ISBN: 0815782349
Label: Brookings Institution Press
Manufacturer: Brookings Institution Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 177
Publication Date: June 08, 2006
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Sales Rank: 271993
Studio: Brookings Institution Press

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Americans are engaged in an intense debate about their judicial branch of government. Some people worry about 'activist' judges who are 'legislating from the bench,' making an end run around electoral democracy, while others feel that the judiciary is properly protecting fundamental rights. How do the political leanings of judges affect their activity on the bench? To put it another way, Are Judges Political? And to what degree? This provocative book produces real answers by looking at what judges actually do, injecting fact and analysis into a discussion that is all too often overwhelmed by sound bites and ideological howling. Renowned legal analyst Cass R. Sunstein (Republic.com), management scholar David Schkade, attorney Lisa Ellman, and judicial clerk Andres Sawicki examine thousands of judicial votes to analyze the influence of ideology on judicial decisions. Focusing principally on the federal courts of appeal, where judgments are made by a panel of three politically appointed judges, the authors scrutinize decisions on some of the most controversial issues in American law and politics. They look at controversial, sometimes polarizing issues--abortion, affirmative action, campaign finance regulation, disability discrimination, environmental protection, and gay rights. They focus on these key questions: Do judges appointed by Republican presidents consistently vote differently from their colleagues who were appointed by a Democrat? When are those differences most stark and predictable? And to what degree are judicial votes affected by the ideological leanings of other judges on the same panel? For example, do judges who find themselves a minority of one behave differently than those who hold either a 2–1 or 3–0 edge? Are Judges Political? injects precision into an impassioned but often impressionistic discussion by quantifying how ideology affects legal judgments. Interestingly, even in the most controversial cases, Republican and Democratic appointees agree more than they disagree. When they do disagree, however, the analysis of who votes how (and under what circumstances) can be quite illuminating and tells us a great deal about human nature as well as politics and justice in America. Are Judges Political? finds that judges do adhere to the law, but where the law is not plain, political convictions clearly play a role role. And when like-minded judges sit together, they may well go to extremes.

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- More Insight into Behavior on the U.S. Courts of Appeals
This is the second of two current book-length examinations of judicial behavior on the United States Courts of Appeals. The other book is "Judging on a Collegial Court" by Hettinger et al., also reviewed on Amazon. The Courts of Appeals, or middle level of the federal court system, merit such attention because for nearly all federal litigation, they are the ultimate court of decision as they oversee the 93 or so district courts. As was the case with the Hettinger volume, while there is no denying that the authors rely upon statistical methods and even (perish the thought!) an occasional chart displaying data, the analysis is so clear and well developed that one does not have to be a political scientist or statistician to follow the discussion quite nicely. And this is vital because these courts are extremely important.

The authors set out to test three fundamental hypotheses with data drawn from examination ... Read More

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