Do Appointed Judges Write Better Opinions?

• In Event: Legal Texts

Abstract

Scholars have long debated whether methods of judicial selection and retention affect judicial behavior. Much less attention has been paid to how these institutions affect legal development and jurisprudence. Using a unique (and enormous) dataset, we use cutting-edge text analytic approaches to examine temporal, cross-sectional, and within-judge changes in the quality and content of judicial opinions issued by state supreme court judges since the American founding. In the process, we catalog temporal trends in judicial opinions, noting changes in their length, specificity, and willingness to embrace the federal judiciary. In addition to introducing an important new dataset to scholars of judicial politics, our findings have important implications for our understanding of both legal history and judicial behavior; that they present a rigorous test of the effects of judicial selection mechanisms means that the findings will also have broad and noteworthy policy implications.

Authors

• Steven Morgan, Pennsylvania State University

• Michael J. Nelson, The Pennsylvania State University