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Presidential Effects on Criminal Justice Policy in the Lower Federal Courts: The Reagan Judges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

C. K. Rowland ,
Donald Songer  and
Robert A. Carp
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Abstract

Scholarly and media accounts have portrayed the Reagan administration as strongly committed to the selection of judges who are ideologically in tune with the president. Interviews with key congressional participants indicate that Reagan has received substantial home-state support for his ideological selection criteria. These findings lead to the prediction that Reagan judges on the lower federal courts will be substantially less supportive of criminal defendants than will Nixon or Carter appointees. Analysis of each appointment cohort's criminal justice decisions confirms this expectation for the district courts and courts of appeals. Indeed, the degree of polarization between the Reagan and Carter cohorts is unprecedented. However, this difference was due to the unexpectedly high support for criminal defendants exhibited by Carter appointees as well as the predicted low support provided by Reagan judges.

Type
Research Note
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , 1988 , pp. 191 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by The Law and Society Association

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Footnotes

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the University of Kansas Graduate Research Fund and the administrative support of the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, in the conduct of this research.

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