Will ignorance & partisan election of judges undermine public trust in the judiciary?

Daedalus

Volumn 137, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 11-15

  Jamieson, Kathleen Hall ^a,b   Hardy, Bruce W ^b,c  

^a Annenberg School for Communication

^b UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 57349200245     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/daed.2008.137.4.11     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. Gregory A. Caldeira and Kevin T. McGuire, "What Americans Know About The Courts and Why It Matters," in The Judicial Branch, ed. Kermit L. Hall and Kevin T. McGuire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 264.
2. The 2007 Annenberg Public Policy Center Judicial Survey was prepared by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. A total of 1,514 adults 18 and older were surveyed by phone from August 8, 2007, to September 2, 2007. The survey has a margin of error = ±3% for results based on full sample. Additional data from this and other surveys can be found at www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org.
3. Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Michael Hennessy, "Public Understanding of and Support for the Courts : Survey Results," The Georgetown Law Journal 95 (2007) : 902 ; original emphases.
4. Sixteen states elect at least some judges in an environment in which there are strong partisan cues, including, in some states, party identification on the ballot. They are Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland*, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina**, Ohio***, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. *Maryland trial judges run in contestable non-partisan general elections but are nominated in party primaries. A candidate in Maryland can cross-file in both the Democratic and Republican primaries. **Although North Carolina moved away from an explicitly partisan ballot in 2002 some partisan campaigning has continued. ***In Ohio, candidates appear on the ballot without party affiliation, but their selection and campaigns are otherwise partisan.
5. Roy A. Schotland, "New Challenges to States' Judicial Selection," The Georgetown Law Journal 95 (2007): 1092.
6. James Sample, Lauren Jones, and Rachel Weiss, The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2006 (Washington, D.C. : Justice at Stake, 2007); www.justiceatstake.org.
7. Anthony Champagne, "Television Ads in Judicial Campaigns, " Indiana Law Review 35 (2001-2002): 670.
8. Sample, Jones, and Weiss, The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2006, 8.
9. Ibid.
10. Viveca Novak, "Judicial Campaigns : Beginning to Look a Lot Like Congress : Would-be judges employ big bucks, TV ads and questionable attacks," November 20, 2006; available at http://www.factcheck.org/ judicial-campaigns/judicial-campaigns-beginning-to-look-a-lot.html.
11. Charles Gardner Geyh, "Why Judicial Elections Stink," The Ohio State Law Journal 64(2003): 47-79.
12. For a detailed description of the multivariate analyses, see the Annenberg Public Policy Center report "Partisan Judicial Elections Foster Cynicism and Distrust" ; available at http ://www. annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/News Details.aspx ?myId=241.
13. See Geyh, "Why Judicial Elections Stink." 14 Sandra Day O'Connor, "Justice for Sale," Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2007.