Political Science 416: Judicial Politics
Information resources for researching federal and state judiciary
Databases for Researching the Supreme Court
-
JSTOR
Provides access to journal articles, books, images, and primary sources. Contents include the Artstor image collection, archival and current scholarly journal content, and historical documents.
-
Academic Search Complete
Academic Search Complete is a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 7,000 full-text periodicals, including nearly 6,000 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 11,000 journals and a total of more than 11,600 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 journals.
-
HeinOnline
Offers extensive access to legal and government materials. Includes Federal Register, U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Reports, state session laws, and more. Explore HeinOnline Subject Guides
-
Westlaw Campus Research
Comprehensive database of legal materials, including cases, statutes, and regulations of the U.S. government and the various state governments; includes the legal encyclopedia American Jurisprudence 2nd and American Law Reports; case law from 1789 to present; current statutes and regulations.
-
Supreme Court DatabaseThe Supreme Court Database is the definitive source for researchers, students, journalists, and citizens interested in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Database contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between the 1791 and 2021 terms.
-
ProQuest CongressionalProQuest Congressional provides access to historical and current Congressional information and publications on all aspects of legislation dealing with life and public policy. Topics include scientific undertakings, historical events, social welfare, economic conditions, communication policies, and an endless array of other subjects.
The database indexes and provides full-text for Congressional Committee Prints, House and Senate Documents and Reports (Congressional Serial Set), Hearings, and Legislative Histories. It also provides member and committee information and political news, as well as access to the Code of Federal Regulations, Federal Register, and the Congressional Record (1985-present). -
GovInfo
Free public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government.
-
Federal Judicial CenterThe Center conducts empirical and exploratory research on case management, court administration, rules of procedure, and similar matters. The results of most research are published in research reports, or in guides or manuals.
-
America: History & Life with Full Text
Database of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. With selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1955 to present, America: History & Life with Full Text also provides full-text coverage of more than 200 journals and nearly 100 books.
Searching JSTOR
-
JSTOR Search Help & ResourcesWhether you're new to research or you are a professional researcher looking for specific information about how our search works, start with one of the following articles to find the resources you need.
Highlighted books from the collection
-
The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior
by
ISBN: 0472098225Publication Date: 2002-12-31The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior accounts for the emergence and exploration of three current theoretical approaches to the study of judicial behavior--attitudinal, strategic, and historical-institutionalist--and shows how the research of these foundational scholars has contributed to contemporary debates about how to conceptualize judges as policy makers. The volume's purpose in looking back is to look forward: to contribute to an ecumenical research agenda on judicial decision making, and, ultimately, to the generation of a unified, general theory of judicial behavior. -
Free to Judge: the power of campaign money in judicial elections
by
ISBN: 9781503627611Publication Date: 2023-08-22Free to Judge is about how and why money increasingly affects the dispensation of justice in our legal system, and what can be done to stop it. One of the barriers to action in the past has been an inability to prove that campaign donations influence state judicial decision-making. In this book, Kang and Shepherd answer that challenge for the first time, with a rigorous empirical study of campaign finance and judicial decision-making data. The threat of such an outcome, and the desire to win reelection, results in judges demonstrably leaning towards the interests and preferences of their campaign donors across all cases. Free to Judge is thus able to identify the pieces of our current system that invite bias, such as judicial reelection, and what reforms should focus on. -
The Battle for the Court: interest groups, judicial elections, and public policy
by
ISBN: 0813940354Publication Date: 2017-10-03In The Battle for the Court, Lawrence Baum, David Klein, and Matthew Streb present a systematic investigation into the effects of interest group involvement in the election of judges. Focusing on personal-injury law, the issue that has played the most substantial role in spurring interest group activity in judicial elections, the authors detail how interest groups mobilize in response to unfavorable rulings by state supreme courts, how their efforts influence the outcomes of supreme court elections, and how those outcomes in turn effectively reshape public policies. -
Without Fear or Favor: Judicial Independence and Judicial Accountability in the States
by
ISBN: 9780804760393Publication Date: 2012-09-19The impartial administration of justice and the accountability of government officials are two of the most strongly held American values. Yet these values are often in direct conflict with one another. At the national level, the U.S. Constitution resolves this tension in favor of judicial independence, insulating judges from the undue influence of other political institutions, interest groups, and the general public. But at the state level, debate has continued as to the proper balance between judicial independence and judicial accountability. Tarr concludes the book by identifying the challenges to state-level judicial independence and accountability that have emerged in recent decades, assessing the solutions offered by the competing sides, and offering proposals for how to strike the appropriate balance between independence and accountability. -
Administering Justice: Placing the Chief Justice in American State Politics
by
ISBN: 9780472056309Publication Date: 2023-08-22Administering Justice examines the leadership role of chief justices in the American states, including how those duties require chief justices to be part of the broader state political environment. Vining and Wilhelm focus extensively on the power of chief justices as public spokespersons, legislative liaisons, and reform leaders. In contrast to much existing research on chief justices in the states, this study weighs their extrajudicial responsibilities rather than intracourt leadership. By assessing the content of State of the Judiciary remarks delivered over a period of sixty years, Vining and Wilhelm are able to analyze the reform agendas advanced by chief justices and determine what factors influence the likelihood of success. These analyses confirm that chief justices engage with state politics in meaningful ways and that reactions to their proposals are influenced by ideological congruence with other political elites and the scope of their requests. -
Regulating Judicial Elections: Assessing State Codes of Judicial Conduct
by
ISBN: 9781317226420Publication Date: 2017-09-05State judicial elections are governed by a unique set of rules that enforce longstanding norms of judicial independence by limiting how judicial candidates campaign. These rules have been a key part of recent debates over judicial elections and have been the subject of several U.S. Supreme Court cases. Regulating Judicial Elections provides the first accounting of the efficacy and consequences of such rules. C. Scott Peters re-frames debates over judicial elections by shifting away from all-or-nothing claims about threats to judicial independence and focusing instead on the trade-offs inherent in our checks and balances system. In doing so, he is able to examine the costs and benefits of state ethical restrictions. Peters finds that while some parts of state codes of conduct achieve their desired goals, others may backfire and increase the politicization of judicial elections. Moreover, modest gains in the protection of independence come at the expense of the effectiveness of elections as accountability mechanisms. These empirical findings will inform ongoing normative debates about judicial elections. -
Making Law in the United States Courts of Appeals
by
ISBN: 9780521810234Publication Date: 2002-08-08The book, first published in 2002, examines circuit court decision making on issues not clearly covered by existing precedents. Its central questions are to what extent circuit judges' choices to adopt legal rules are influenced by the actions of other circuit judges and whether judges attempt to decide legal issues as they think the Supreme Court would in their place. Evidence comes from quantitative analyses of several hundred cases and from interviews with two dozen circuit court judges. The evidence indicates that judges give attention to the work of colleagues on their own court and other circuits and that the actions, prestige, and expertise of these colleagues are important. On the other hand, while Supreme Court precedents factor heavily in the circuit judges' decisions, expectations as to how the Supreme Court might decide appear to have little effect on their actions. These findings suggest that legal and policy goals influence judges' decision-making. -
Diversity Matters: judicial policy making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals
by
ISBN: 9780813937182Publication Date: 2015-05-19Until President Jimmy Carter launched an effort to diversify the lower federal courts, the U.S. courts of appeals had been composed almost entirely of white males. But by 2008, over a quarter of sitting judges were women and 15 percent were African American or Hispanic. Underlying the argument made by administration officials for a diverse federal judiciary has been the expectation that the presence of women and minorities will ensure that the policy of the courts will reflect the experiences of a diverse population. Yet until now, scholarly studies have offered only limited support for the expectation that judges' race, ethnicity, or gender impacts their decision making on the bench. In Diversity Matters, Susan B. Haire and Laura P. Moyer employ innovative new methods of analysis to offer a fresh examination of the effects of diversity on the many facets of decision making in the federal appellate courts. -
The View from the Bench and Chambers: examining judicial process and decision making on the U.S. Courts of Appeals
by
ISBN: 0813936004Publication Date: 2014-10-30For most of their history, the U.S. courts of appeals have toiled in obscurity, well out of the limelight of political controversy. But as the number of appeals has increased dramatically, while the number of cases heard by the Supreme Court has remained the same, the courts of appeals have become the court of last resort for the vast majority of litigants. This enhanced status has been recognized by important political actors, and as a result, appointments to the courts of appeals have become more and more contentious since the 1990s. The View from the Bench and Chambers melds a series of quantitative analyses of judicial decisions with the perspectives gained from in-depth interviews with the judges and their law clerks. This multifaceted approach yields a level of insight beyond that provided by any previous work on appellate courts in the United States, making The View from the Bench and Chambers the most comprehensive and rich account of the operation of these courts to date. -
Inside Appellate Courts: the impact of court organization on judicial decision making in the United States Courts of Appeals
by
ISBN: 0472024035Publication Date: 2009-12-10Inside Appellate Courts is a comprehensive study of how the organization of a court affects the decisions of appellate judges. Drawing on interviews with more than seventy federal appellate judges and law clerks, Jonathan M. Cohen challenges the assumption that increasing caseloads and bureaucratization have impinged on judges' abilities to bestow justice. Cohen theorizes that, like large corporations, the courts must overcome the critical tension between the autonomy of the judges and their interdependence and coordination. However, unlike corporations, courts lack a central office to coordinate the balance between independence and interdependence. Cohen investigates how courts have dealt with this tension by examining topics such as the role of law clerks, methods of communication between judges, the effect of a court's size and geographic location, the role of argumentation, the use of visiting judges, the significance of the increasing use of unpublished decisions, and the nature and role of court culture. -
Battle over the Bench: senators, interest groups, and lower court confirmations
by
ISBN: 0813929989Publication Date: 2010-08-16The lower federal courts have increasingly become the final arbiters of the important political and social issues of the day. As a result, who gets seated on the bench has become a major political issue. In Battle over the Bench, Amy Steigerwalt argues that the key to understanding the dynamics of the lower court confirmation process is to examine the process itself. She offers a new analytic framework for understanding when nominations become contested, and shows when and how key actors can influence the fate of nominations and ultimately determine who will become a federal judge. -
Judging Law and Policy: Courts and Policymaking in the American Political System
by
ISBN: 1283442469Publication Date: 2012-01-01To what extent do courts make social and public policy and influence policy change? This text analyzes this question generally and in seven distinct policy areas that play out in both federal and state courts tax policy, environmental policy, reproductive rights, sex equality, affirmative action, school finance, and same-sex marriage. The authors address these issues through the twin lenses of how state and federal courts must and do interact with the other branches of government and whether judicial policy-making is a form of activist judging. Each chapter uncovers the policymaking aspects of judicial process by investigating the current state of the law, the extent of court involvement in policy change, the responses of other governmental entities and outside actors, and the factors which influenced the degree of implementation and impact of the relevant court decisions.
