The Consequences of Diversifying the Federal Courts on Judicial Independence

• In Event: Poster Session - Law and Courts & Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations
  In Poster Session: Poster Session - Law and Courts

Abstract

The American judiciary has seen a dramatic rise in diversity with active efforts to confirm women and racial minorities to the bench. This influx of diverse jurists provides an opportunity to empirically test the impact of racial and gender diversification on existing explanations of judicial selection and behavior. Do selectors have the same ability to maximize their policy preferences through ideological appointments to the bench? Does judicial decision-making align with the ideological accounts of selection equally across gender and race? Using case outcomes on the federal district court (1985-2012), we find that white jurists tend to adhere to the ideological selection account closely; however, there is no relationship between decisions adopted by jurists of color and their selectors’ ideology. Diversifying the bench means good news for judicial independence and bad news for ideologically-motivated politicians. Weak links between the ideology of the selectors and the voting behavior of the judges means lower judicial deference to political actors to that extent the judiciary may serve as an effective veto player.

Authors

• Scott J Hofer, St. Francis College

• Susan Vivian Achury, Lycoming College