Competing Interests in State Supreme Courts: Justices' Votes and Voting Rights
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2374-7781.2003.24.0.267-283Abstract
The presidential election of 2000 put a spotlight on the substantial opportunities for judicial involvement in the electoral process and the potential for partisan and ideological preferences to conflict in judicial choices. Building on recent scholarship analyzing the influence of institutions and preferences on state supreme court decision-making, I hypothesize that in cases involving voting rights decisions the partisan affiliation of justices rather than ideology contributes to justices’ voting behavior. Using data from the State Supreme Court Data Project and other data, I test the comparative influence of traditional left-right ideology and alignment with the dominant party of the state on ballot access cases. I find evidence that partisanship does matter to justices in ballot access cases, conditional on the method of judicial selection.References
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