Chris W. Bonneau

Predicting Challengers in State Supreme Court Elections: Context and the Politics of Institutional Design

In this article, we answer two important questions about the role of challengers in elections to the states’ highest courts: (1) under what conditions do incumbents draw challengers, and (2) do these same conditions influence whether the challengers entering these races have sufficient experience to pose a threat to the officeholders (i.e., are they quality challengers). While the factors related to each electoral contest and the forces characterizing the overall political climate of the state should affect the type of challenge, if any, we also expect institutions to matter. Specifically, factors governing the attractiveness of supreme court seats, as well as the formal means by which judicial elections are organized, all should serve to enhance or inhibit competition. In an analysis of all 146 partisan and nonpartisan elections to state supreme courts from 1988 through 1995, we find that competition from both inexperienced and experienced challengers is predictable from some basic information about the incumbents, the states, and the institutional context. Like legislators, judges can influence their chances of being challenged only to a limited degree. However, the states can increase or decrease competition to some extent by manipulating electoral system characteristics and a variety of factors that make supreme court seats more or less valuable. In fact, under certain scenarios, state supreme courts may be more democratic in character and function than is generally recognized or perhaps preferred.

The Effects of Campaign Spending in State Supreme Court Elections

Electoral competition has been an important subject of political science research over the past several decades. This article examines the effects of campaign spending on electoral competition in state supreme court elections. Specifically, the author addresses the question, How do campaign expenditures affect the performance of incumbents in supreme court elections? The author finds that, just like elections to Congress and state legislatures, electoral competition in state supreme court elections can be understood by looking at characteristics of the candidates, the state and electoral context, and institutional arrangements.

Electoral Verdicts: Incumbent Defeats in State Supreme Court Elections

The election of judges has been an enduring, though controversial, institution. Although there have been many popular accounts of howthese elections are decided by factors irrelevant to a fair and impartial judiciary, recent scholarship has shown that electoral competition in races for the state high court bench can be understood in systematic ways. Yet, although we know the factors that can make races more or less competitive, we lack understanding of the factors that contribute to the electoral defeat of sitting justices. In this article, I examine the determinants of electoral defeat for all incumbent state supreme court justices who ran for reelection between 1990 and 2000. Contrary to the arguments of those who claim that judicial elections are decided in a random, nonsystematic manner, I find that the probability of an incumbent’s being defeated is based on characteristics of the candidates, the state and electoral context, and institutional arrangements.

Patterns of Campaign Spending and Electoral Competition in State Supreme Court Elections

One of the hottest topics in politics today is the method by which state supreme court justices are selected. The debate over whether judges should be appointed or elected (or some combination of both) is raging in several state legislatures, as well as in the media. State supreme court elections have been heavily criticized for the increasing amounts of money that have been raised and spent during campaigns for the state high court bench. In this article, I examine the trends in campaign spending and electoral contests in all contested state supreme court races from 1990 to 2000.

Campaign Spending, Diminishing Marginal Returns, and Campaign Finance Restrictions in Judicial Elections

For years, scholars of elections have argued about whether campaign finance limitations adversely affect electoral competition. In this article, we examine how the institutional campaign finance restrictions differentially affect the performance of incumbents and challengers. Using elections for the state high court bench between 1990-2004, we demonstrate that candidate spending in judicial elections has diminishing marginal returns, but that the returns to challenger spending diminish more slowly than incumbent spending. Since this is the case, campaign finance restrictions that limit candidate spending dispropor- tionately harm challengers, increasing the incumbency advantage and decreasing electoral competition. That is, states with more stringent contribution limits have lower levels of candidate spending, and the restrictions thus put challengers at a competitive disadvantage.

Attack Advertising, the White Decision, and Voter Participation in State Supreme Court Elections

This project evaluates whether televised attack advertising and less restrictive campaign speech codes brought about by Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2002) have had adverse effects on citizen participation in state supreme court elections. The authors’ specific focus is on partisan and nonpartisan races from 2002 through 2006. Overall, they find that attack ads and liberalized speech codes actually mobilize rather than demobilize the electorate. These findings highlight the striking similarities between supreme court elections and elections to other important offices. These results also raise questions about the validity of normative accounts of the relationship between citizens and the bench.

Impartial Judges? Race, Institutional Context, and U.S. State Supreme Courts

We address a fundamental question in judicial politics: other factors being equal, do African-American judges behave differently than white judges? Many presume that white judges differ from their minority counterparts in terms of sentencing, deliberation, and propensity to overturn decisions. However, to date, little empirical evidence exists to suggest systematic differences in behavior between these judges. Here, we utilize the newly created judge-level U.S. State Supreme Court Database to assess whether judicial decisionmaking is affected by the race of the judge. Looking at all criminal cases decided by U.S. state supreme court judges from 1995 to 1998, we find evidence of differences between white and non-white judges, but only in states lacking an intermediate appellate court. This finding suggests the effects of race on judicial decisionmaking are conditioned by the institutional structure of the court system.

Campaign contributions and judicial decisions in partisan and nonpartisan elections

Part I: Selecting Judges 1. Selecting Justice: Strategy and Uncertainty in Choosing Supreme Court Nominees Christine L. Nemacheck 2. The Role of Public Opinion in Supreme Court Confirmations Jonathan P. Kastellec, Jeffrey R. Lax, and Justin Phillips 3. Campaign Contributions and Judicial Decisions in Partisan and Nonpartisan Elections Damon M. Cann, Chris W. Bonneau, and Brent D. Boyea Part II: Trial Courts 4. Race and Death Sentencing Isaac Unah and John Charles Boger 5. Under-Estimating and Over-Estimating Litigation: How Activist Plaintiffs May Advance Their Causes Even As They Lose Their Cases William Haltom and Michael McCann Part III: Appellate Courts 6. Patterns of Policy Making across State Supreme Courts Scott A. Comparato, Scott D. McClurg, and Shane A. Gleason 7. Decision Making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals: The Determinants of Reversal on Appeal Virginia A. Hettinger and Stefanie A. Lindquist 8. Supreme Court Agenda Setting: Policy Uncertainty and Legal Considerations Ryan C. Black and Ryan J. Owens 9. The Origin and Development of Stare Decisis at the U.S. Supreme Court Timothy Johnson, James F. Spriggs, II, and Paul. J. Wahlbeck 10. Bargaining and Opinion Writing on the U.S. Supreme Court Tom S. Clark Part IV: Courts and Their Political Environments 11. Goldilocks and the Supreme Court: Understanding the Relationship between the Supreme Court, the President, and the Congress Michael A. Bailey and Forrest Maltzman 12. Interest Groups and Their Influence on Judicial Policy Paul M. Collins, Jr. 13. Public Opinion, Religion, and Constraints on Judicial Behavior Kevin T. McGuire Part V: Implementation and Impact 14. Lower Court Compliance with Precedent Sara C. Benesh and Wendy L. Martinek 15. Why Strict Scrutiny Requires Transparency: The Practical Effects of Bakke, Gratz, and Grutter Richard Sander

The Effect of Campaign Contributions on Judicial Decisionmaking

In this paper we address a pressing issue on the contemporary political agenda: Is justice for sale? The implications of such a relationship between campaign contributions and judicial decisions, if it exists, merit a thorough empirical investigation regarding the existence of quid pro quo exchanges between judges and their campaign contributors. We examine decisions by judges on both nonpartisan (Nevada) and partisan (Michigan, Texas) supreme courts in the 2005 term. While we do not find any evidence of a relationship between contributions and the votes of judges in Nevada, it does appear that there is a quid pro quo relationship between contributors and votes in Michigan and Texas. Using an instrumental variables probit model, we are able to control for the endogeneity between contributions and votes and thus can conclude that contributions drive judicial votes, and not the other way around. While we only examine three states and one year here, the results suggest that there may be circumstances where the appearance of impropriety surrounding campaign contributions and judicial decisionmaking may be an empirical reality.

Evaluating the Effects of Multiple Opinion Rationales on Supreme Court Legitimacy

The literature on the U.S. Supreme Court has paid substantial attention to the perceived legitimacy of the Court’s decisions. However, much less attention has been paid to the perceived legitimacy of the reasons the Court provides for its opinions. We design two experiments to understand how the public perceives opinion content. Unlike prior studies, we take it as a given that the Court uses legal reasons in its decisions. This offers us a baseline by which to compare departures from these legal reasons. We find that extralegal reasons, when paired with legal reasons, do nothing to harm the legitimacy of the Court. Furthermore, we find that even with a lack of legal reasons, the use of extralegal reasons does not harm the legitimacy of the Court, even among those who find that these reasons are inappropriate for the Court to use.