Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T14:27:25.047Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Responsive Justice?

Retention Elections, Prosecutors, and Public Opinion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Michael J. Nelson
Michael J. Nelson*
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis
*
Contact the author at mjnelson7@gmail.com.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Do elected judges and prosecutors change their behavior to reflect public opinion after they receive information about constituent preferences? In this article I use a unique measure of public opinion—votes on an initiative to legalize marijuana—to examine the responsiveness of prosecutors and trial court judges to a strong, issue-specific, constituency-level opinion signal. I find that, at least in recent drug cases in Colorado, both prosecutors and judges changed their sentencing behavior after receiving that signal. Prosecutors responded only to local-level opinion, while judges responded to both local and statewide opinion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , Spring 2014 , pp. 117 - 152
Copyright
© 2014 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I thank Sara Benesh, James Gibson, Morgan Hazelton, Rachael Hinkle, Andrew D. Martin, Keith Schnakenberg, Alicia Uribe, seminar participants at Washington University in St. Louis, Dave Klein, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful advice, as well as the Colorado judicial branch for providing me with the data and answering questions about them. A previous version of this article was presented at the 2012 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.

References

American Judicature Society. 2013. “Judicial Selection in the States: Initial Selection, Retention, and Term Length.” American Judicature Society, Des Moines, IA.Google Scholar
Arnold, R. Douglas. 1993. “Can Inattentive Citizens Control Their Elected Representatives?” In Congress Reconsidered, ed. Dodd, Lawrence C. and Oppenheimer, Bruce I., 5th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Aspin, Larry. 2011. “The 2010 Judicial Retention Elections in Perspective: Continuity and Change from 1964 to 2010.” Judicature 94:218–32.Google Scholar
Baum, Lawrence. 1994. “What Judges Want: Judges’ Goals and Judicial Behavior.” Political Research Quarterly 47:749–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Lawrence. 1997. The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Lawrence. 2003. “Judicial Elections and Judicial Independence: The Voter’s Perspective.” Ohio State Law Journal 64:13–42.Google Scholar
Berdejó, Carlos, and Yuchtman, Noam M.. 2013. “Crime, Punishment, and Politics: An Analysis of Political Cycles in Criminal Sentencing.” Review of Economics and Statistics 95 (3): 741–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonneau, Chris W., and Gann Hall, Melinda. 2009. In Defense of Judicial Elections. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brace, , Paul, , and Boyea, Brent D.. 2008. “State Public Opinion, the Death Penalty, and the Practice of Electing Judges.” American Journal of Political Science 52:360–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brace, , Paul, , Langer, Laura, and Gann Hall, Melinda. 2000. “Measuring the Preferences of State Supreme Court Judges.” Journal of Politics 62:387–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brace, , Paul, , Sims-Butler, Kellie, Arceneaux, Kevin, and Johnson, Martin. 2002. “Public Opinion in the American States: New Perspectives Using National Survey Data.” American Journal of Political Science 46:173–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bresler, K. 1994. “Seeking Justice, Seeking Election, and Seeking the Death Penalty: The Ethics of Prosecutorial Candidates’ Campaigning on Capital Convictions.” Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 7:941–58.Google Scholar
Caldarone, Richard P., Canes-Wrone, Brandice, and Clark, Tom S.. 2009. “Partisan Labels and Democratic Accountability: An Analysis of State Supreme Court Abortion Decisions.” Journal of Politics 71:560–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canes-Wrone, Brandice, Clark, Tom S. and Jee Kwang Park. 2012. “Judicial Independence and Retention Elections.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 28:211–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cann, Damon M., and Wilhelm, Teena. 2011. “Case Visibility and the Electoral Connection in State Supreme Courts.” American Politics Research 39:557–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carp, Robert A., Stidham, Ronald, and Manning, Kenneth L.. 2007. The Judicial Process in America. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Casillas, Christopher J., Enns, Peter K. and Wohlfarth, Patrick C.. 2011. “How Public Opinion Constrains the U.S. Supreme Court.” American Journal of Political Science 55:74–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Tom S. 2011. The Limits of Judicial Independence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Colorado Secretary of State. 2007. Official Publication of the Abstract of Votes Cast for the 2005 Coordinated, 2006 Primary, 2006 General Elections. Denver: State of Colorado.Google Scholar
Cook, Beverly B. 1977. “Public Opinion and Federal Judicial Policy.” American Journal of Political Science 21 (3): 567–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curran, Debra A. 1983. “Judicial Discretion and Defendant’s Sex.” Criminology 21:41–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, , Lee, , and Martin, Andrew D.. 2010. “Does Public Opinion Influence the Supreme Court? Possibly Yes (but We’re Not Sure Why).” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 13:263–81.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S., Wright, Gerald C. and McIver, John P.. 1993. Statehouse Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Flemming, Roy B., and Dan Wood, B.. 1997. “The Public and the Supreme Court: Individual Justice Responsiveness to American Policy Moods.” American Journal of Political Science 41:468–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, John. 2008. Applied Regression Analysis and Generalized Linear Models. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Sage.Google Scholar
Freedman, David A., and Sekhon, Jasjeet S.. 2010. “Endogeneity in Probit Response Models.” Political Analysis 18:138–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelman, , Andrew, , and Hill, Jennifer. 2007. Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L. 1978. “Judges’ Role Orientations, Attitudes, and Decisions: An Interactive Model.” American Political Science Review 72 (3): 911–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L. 1980. “Environmental Constraints on the Behavior of Judges: A Representational Model of Judicial Decision Making.” Law and Society Review 14 (2): 343–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles, Michael W., Blackstone, Bethany, and Vining, Richard L.. 2008. “The Supreme Court in American Democracy: Unraveling the Linkages between Public Opinion and Judicial Decision Making.” Journal of Politics 70:293–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Stanford C., and Huber, Gregory A.. 2007. “The Effect of Electoral Competitiveness on Incumbent Behavior.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 2:107–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Stanford C., and Huber, Gregory A.. 2009. “The Political Economy of Prosecution.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 5:1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haddad, James B., Marsh, Elizabeth P., Zagel, James B., Meyer, Linda R., Starkman, Gary L. and Bauer, William J.. 2008. Criminal Procedure: Cases and Comments. 7th ed. St. Paul, MN: West.Google Scholar
Hall, Melinda Gann. 1987. “Constituent Influence in State Supreme Courts: Conceptual Notes and a Case Study.” Journal of Politics 49:1117–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Melinda Gann. 2001. “State Supreme Courts in American Democracy: Probing the Myths of Judicial Reform.” American Political Science Review 95:315–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heckman, James A. 1979. “Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error.” Econometrica 47:153–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, Gregory A., and Gordon, Stanford C.. 2004. “Accountability and Coercion: Is Justice Blind When It Runs for Office?” American Journal of Political Science 48:247–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kastellec, Jonathan P., and Lax, Jeffrey R.. 2008. “Case Selection and the Study of Judicial Politics.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 5:407–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kritzer, Herbert M. 1979. “Federal Judges and Their Political Environments: The Influence of Public Opinion.” American Journal of Political Science 23 (1): 194–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuklinski, James H., and Stanga, John E.. 1979. “Political Participation and Government Responsiveness: The Behavior of California Superior Courts.” American Political Science Review 73 (4): 1090–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langer, Laura. 2002. Judicial Review in State Supreme Courts: A Comparative Study. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Lax, Jeffrey R., and Phillips, Justin H.. 2009. “How Should We Estimate Public Opinion in the States?” American Journal of Political Science 53 (1): 107–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lim, Claire S. H., Snyder, James J. Jr., and Strömberg, David. 2010. “Measuring Media Influence on U.S. State Courts.” Working paper, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew D., and Quinn, Kevin M.. 2002. “Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999.” Political Analysis 10:134–53.Google Scholar
Mayhew, David R. 1974. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T., and Stimson, James A.. 2004. “The Least Dangerous Branch Revisited: New Evidence on Supreme Court Responsiveness to Public Preferences.” Journal of Politics 66:1018–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Medwed, D. S. 2004. “The Zeal Deal: Prosecutorial Resistance to Post-conviction Claims of Innocence.” Boston University Law Review 84:125–83.Google Scholar
Nelson, Michael J. 2011. “Uncontested and Unaccountable? Contestation Rates in Trial Court Elections.” Judicature 10:208–17.Google Scholar
Norpoth, , Helmut, , and Segal, Jeffrey. 1994. “Popular Influence on Supreme Court Decisions.” American Political Science Review 88:711–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Priest, George L., and Klein, Benjamin. 1984. “The Selection of Disputes for Litigation.” Journal of Legal Studies 13:1–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pritchard, David. 1986. “Homicide and Bargained Justice: The Agenda-Setting Effect of Crime News on Prosecutors.” Public Opinion Quarterly 50:143–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rottman, David B., and Strickland, Shauna M.. 2006. State Court Organization, 2004. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.Google Scholar
Saltzburg, Stephen A., and Capra, Daniel J.. 1996. American Criminal Procedure: Cases and Commentary. St. Paul, MN: West.Google Scholar
Schotland, Roy A. 2011. “Iowa’s 2010 Judicial Election: Appropriate Accountability or Rampant Passion?” Court Review 46:118–28.Google Scholar
Steffensmeier, , Darrell, , Ulmer, Jeffrey, and Kramer, John. 1998. “The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Age in Criminal Sentencing: The Punishment Cost of Being Young, Black, and Male.” Criminology 36:763–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tonry, Michael. 2011. “Punishment.” In The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Criminal Justice, ed. Tonry, Michael, 95–125. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Traut, Carol Ann, and Emmert, Craig F.. 1998. “Expanding the Integrated Model of Judicial Decision Making: The California Justices and Capital Punishment.” Journal of Politics 60:1166–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Unnever, James D., Frazier, Charles E. and Henretta, John C.. 1980. “Race Differences in Criminal Sentencing.” Sociological Quarterly 21:197–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vining, , Richard, , and Wilhelm, Teena. 2011. “Measuring Case Salience in State Courts of Last Resort.” Political Research Quarterly 64:559–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wold, John T., and Culver, John H.. 1987. “The Defeat of the California Justices: The Campaign, the Electorate, and the Issue of Judicial Accountability.” Judicature 70:348–55.Google Scholar
Wolfinger, Raymond E., and Rosenstone, Steven J.. 1980. Who Votes? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar