Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T21:34:29.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Challenges to the Impartiality of State Supreme Courts: Legitimacy Theory and “New-Style” Judicial Campaigns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2008

JAMES L. GIBSON
JAMES L. GIBSON*
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis
*
James L. Gibson is Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government, Department of Political Science, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Director of the Program on Citizenship and Democratic Values, Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, at Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899 ([email protected]). He is also Fellow, Centre for Comparative and International Politics, and Professor Extraordinary in Political Science, Stellenbosch University (South Africa).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Institutional legitimacy is perhaps the most important political capital courts possess. Many believe, however, that the legitimacy of elected state courts is being threatened by the rise of politicized judicial election campaigns and the breakdown of judicial impartiality. Three features of such campaigns, the argument goes, are dangerous to the perceived impartiality of courts: campaign contributions, attack ads, and policy pronouncements by candidates for judicial office. By means of an experimental vignette embedded in a representative survey, I investigate whether these factors in fact compromise the legitimacy of courts. The survey data indicate that campaign contributions and attack ads do indeed lead to a diminution of legitimacy, in courts just as in legislatures. However, policy pronouncements, even those promising to make decisions in certain ways, have no impact whatsoever on the legitimacy of courts and judges. These results are strongly reinforced by the experiment's ability to compare the effects of these campaign factors across institutions (a state Supreme Court and a state legislature). Thus, this analysis demonstrates that legitimacy is not obdurate and that campaign activity can indeed deplete the reservoir of goodwill courts typically enjoy, even if the culprit is not the free-speech rights the U.S. Supreme Court announced in 2002.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 102 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 59 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2008

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.)

References

REFERENCES

American Association for Public Opinion Research. 2000. Standard Definitions: Final Dispositions of Case Codes and Outcome Rates for Surveys. Ann Arbor, MI: AAPOR.Google Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, and Iyengar, Shanto. 1995. Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Aronson, Elliot, Ellsworth, Phoebe C., Carlsmith, J. Merrill, and Gonzales, Marti Hope. 1990. Methods of Research in Social Psychology. 2nd ed.New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Banner, Stephen. 1988. “Disqualifying Elected Judges from Cases Involving Campaign Contributors.” Stanford Law Review 40 (January): 449–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Lawrence. 2003. “Judicial Elections and Judicial Independence: The Voter's Perspective.” Ohio State Law Journal 64 (1): 13–41.Google Scholar
Baum, Lawrence, and Hojnacki, Marie. 1992. “Choosing Judicial Candidates: How Voters Explain Their Decisions.” Judicature 75 (April-May): 300–9.Google Scholar
Bonneau, Chris W. 2005. “What Price Justice(s)? Understanding Campaign Spending in State Supreme Court Elections.” State Politics and Policy Quarterly 5 (Summer): 107–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brief and Appendix for Respondents, Republican Party of Minnesota, et al. v. White, et al. 2002. 536 U.S. 765. (No. 01-521).Google Scholar
Brooks, Deborah Jordan. 2006. “The Resilient Voter: Moving Toward Closure in the Debate over Negative Campaigning and Turnout.” The Journal of Politics 68 (August): 684–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A., and Gibson, James L.. 1992. “The Etiology of Public Support for the Supreme Court.” American Journal of Political Science 36 (August): 635–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cann, Damon M. 2002. “Campaign Contributions and Judicial Behavior.” The American Review of Politics 23 (Fall): 261–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Champagne, Anthony. 1988. “Judicial Reform in Texas.” Judicature 72 (October-November): 146–59.Google Scholar
Cheek, Kyle, and Champagne, Anthony. 2004. Judicial Politics in Texas: Partisanship, Money, and Politics in State Courts. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jacob, Cohen, Patricia, West, Stephen G., and Aiken, Leona S.. 2003. Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. 3rd ed.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Coleman, John J., and Manna, Paul F.. 2000. “Congressional Campaign Spending and the Quality of Democracy.” The Journal of Politics 62 (August): 757–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Thomas D., and Campbell, Donald T.. 1979. Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Dimino, Michael R. 2003. “Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Robe: Judicial Elections, the First Amendment, and Judges as Politicians.” Yale Law and Policy Review 21 (Spring): 301–82.Google Scholar
Dubois, Philip L. 1986. “Penny for Your Thoughts? Campaign Spending in California Trial Court Elections, 1976–1982.” Western Political Quarterly 38 (June): 265–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Echeverria, John D. 2000. “Changing the Rules by Changing the Players: The Environmental Issue in State Judicial Elections.” New York University Environmental Law Journal 9 (2): 217–303.Google Scholar
Finkel, Steven, and Geer, John. 1998. “A Spot Check: Casting Doubt on the Demobilizing Effect of Attack Advertising.” American Journal of Political Science 42 (April): 573–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Lawrence M. 1998. American Law: An Introduction. 2nd ed.New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Geer, John G. 2006. In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L. 2002. “Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation: Judging the Fairness of Amnesty in South Africa.” American Journal of Political Science 46 (July): 540–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L. 2004. Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation? New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L. 2006. “Judicial Institutions.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions, eds. Rhodes, R. A. W., Binder, Sarah A., and Rockman, Bert A.. New York: Oxford University Press. 514–34.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Caldeira, Gregory A.. 1998. “Changes in the Legitimacy of the European Court of Justice: A Post-Maastricht Analysis.” British Journal of Political Science 28 (January): 63–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Caldeira, Gregory A.. 2006. “Politicized Confirmation Processes and the Legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court.” Presented at the 64rd Annual National Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L., Caldeira, Gregory A., and Baird, Vanessa. 1998. “On the Legitimacy of National High Courts.” American Political Science Review 92 (June): 343–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., Caldeira, Gregory A., and Spence, Lester Kenyatta. 2003. “The Supreme Court and the U.S. Presidential Election of 2000: Wounds, Self-Inflicted or Otherwise?” British Journal of Political Science 33 (October): 535–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., Caldeira, Gregory A., and Spence, Lester Kenyatta. 2005. “Why Do People Accept Public Policies They Oppose? Testing Legitimacy Theory with a Survey-Based Experiment.” Political Research Quarterly 58 (June): 187–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Gouws, Amanda. 1999. “Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Attributions of Blame and the Struggle over Apartheid.” American Political Science Review 93 (September): 501–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Gouws, Amanda. 2001. “Making Tolerance Judgments: The Effects of Context, Local and National.” The Journal of Politics 63 (November): 1067–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Deborah, Samis, Sarah, Bender, Edwin, and Weiss, Rachel. 2005. The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2004. How Special Interest Pressure on Our Courts Has Reached a “Tipping Point”—and How to Keep Our Courts Fair and Impartial. Washington, DC: Justice at Stake Campaign.Google Scholar
Grosskopf, Anke, and Mondak, Jeffrey J.. 1998. “Do Attitudes toward Specific Supreme Court Decisions Matter? The Impact of Webster and Texas v. Johnson on Public Confidence in the Supreme Court.” Political Research Quarterly 51 (September): 633–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Melinda Gann. 2001. “State Supreme Courts in American Democracy: Probing the Myths of Judicial Reform.” American Political Science Review 95 (June): 315–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Mark. 1991. “The High Cost of Judging.” ABA Journal 77: 44.Google Scholar
Hibbing, John R., and Theiss-Morse, Elizabeth. 1995. Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes toward American Political Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hibbing, John R., Theiss-Morse, Elizabeth. 2002. Stealth Democracy: Americans' Beliefs about How Government Should Work. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoekstra, Valerie J. 2003. Public Reaction to Supreme Court Decisions. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hojnacki, Marie, and Baum, Lawrence. 1992. “‘New-Style’ Judicial Campaigns and Voters: Economic Issues and Union Members in Ohio.” The Western Political Quarterly 45 (December): 921–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Donald W., and Riddlesperger, James W. Jr. 1991. “Money and Politics in Judicial Elections: The 1988 Election of the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court.” Judicature 74 (December-January): 184–89.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R., and Palfrey, Thomas R., eds. 1993. Experimental Foundations of Political Science. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kritzer, Herbert M., and Voelker, John. 1998. “Familiarity Breeds Respect: How Wisconsin Citizens View Their Courts.” Judicature 82 (September-October): 58–64.Google Scholar
Lau, Richard R., and Pomper, Gerald M.. 2002. “Effectiveness of Negative Campaigning in U.S. Senate Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 46 (January): 47–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lau, Richard R., Sigelman, Lee, Heldman, Caroline, and Babbitt, Paul. 1999. “The Effects of Negative Political Advertisements: A Meta-Analytic Assessment.” American Political Science Review 93 (December): 851–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mark, David. 2006. Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
McDermott, Monika L. 1997. “Voting Cues in Low-Information Elections: Candidate Gender as a Social Information Variable in Contemporary United States Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 41 (January): 270–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T. 2004. “The Institutionalization of the U.S. Supreme Court.” Political Analysis 12 (Spring): 128–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mutz, Diana C., and Reeves, Byron. 2005. “The New Videomalaise: Effects of Televised Incivility on Political Trust.” American Political Science Review 99 (February): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persily, Nathaniel, and Lammie, Kelli. 2004. “Perceptions of Corruption and Campaign Finance: When Public Opinion Determines Constitutional Law.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 153 (June): 119–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Primo, David M. 2002. “Public Opinion and Campaign Finance: Reformers Versus Reality.” The Independent Review VII (Fall): 207–19.Google Scholar
Republican Party of Minnesota, et al. v. Suzanne White, Chairperson, Minnesota Board of Judicial Standards, et al. 2002. 536 U.S. 765.Google Scholar
Republican Party of Minnesota v. White. 2005, 416 F.3d 8th Circ. 738.Google Scholar
Robinson, Paul H., and Darley, John M.. 1998. “Objectivist Versus Subjectivist Views of Criminality: A Study of the Role of Social Science in Criminal Law Theory.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 18 (Fall): 409–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheb, John M. II, and Lyons, William. 2000. “The Myth of Legality and Public Evaluation of the Supreme Court.” Social Science Quarterly 81 (December): 928–40.Google Scholar
Schultz, David. 2006. “Minnesota Republican Party V. White and the Future of State Judicial Elections.” Albany Law Review 69: 985–1011.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Robert Y. 2003. “Rebuttal to Ayres.” In Inside the Campaign Finance Battle: Court Testimony on the New Reform, eds. Corrado, Anthony, Mann, Thomas E., and Potter, Trevor. Washington, DC: Brookings, 278–84.Google Scholar
Tate, C. Neal, and Vallinder, Torbjörn. 1995. The Global Expansion of Judicial Power. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Texas Office of Court Administration. 1998. Public Trust and Confidence in the Courts and Legal Profession in Texas: Summary Report. <http://www.courts.state.tx.us/publicinfo/publictrust/sumrpt.pdf>. (December 27, 2004)..+(December+27,+2004).>Google Scholar
Tyler, Tom R. 2001. “A Psychological Perspective on the Legitimacy of Institutions and Authorities.” In The Psychology of Legitimacy: Emerging Perspectives on Ideology, Justice, and Intergroup Relations, eds. Jost, John T. and Major, Brenda. New York: Cambridge University Press, 416–436.Google Scholar
Tyler, Tom R. 2006. “Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy and Legitimation.” Annual Review of Psychology 57 (January): 375–400.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ware, Stephen J. 1999. “Money, Politics and Judicial Decisions: A Case Study of Arbitration in Alabama.” Journal of Law and Politics 25 (4): 645–86.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.