Bonneau found that state supreme court campaign spending was driven by the characteristics of race, institutional arrangements, and the electoral and state supreme court context. There were moments when he defended his position well, but then moments when he did not. A few of his hypotheses were disproved, either as having intervening factors or spurious.
The main strength in Bonneau’s argument was that he gave many comparisons and contrasts of the state judicial systems. They are similar in the fact that they need money in order to campaign and they need to campaign in order to get electoral support. They are different because judges are not expected to represent the interests of their constituents when compared to legislators. They are prohibited from campaigning on issues that may come before the court. State supreme court elections occur under a variety of institutional arrangements.
The main weakness in Bonneau’s argument was his estimation technique. He used data from all 281 partisan and nonpartisan elections from 1990 to 2000. He used a dataset on 1980-1995 state supreme court elections and supplemented them through 2000. Regardless of his hypotheses, he found that a race for the state high court bench was more expensive if it was for an open seat, if the competition for it was closer, if there were fewer high court seats on the ballot, if
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The presidency is more polarized now than it was before the 1990s. Even when Reagan was president, there were both liberals and conservatives in both Democratic and Republican parties. There was a slight difference between Northern and Southern Democrats, but for the most part, there were different ideologies in both partisanships. Now, that is not the case. We only have liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. This factor, amongst others, should have had a greater impact on his
Further, Dr. Azari presented a chart of Pew Research Center’s results of conducted surveys that illustrated the increase in partisanship of elections between people aligning to
In the essay Federal No. 78 deals with the proposed structure of federal courts, their powers and jurisdiction, the method of appointing judges, and related matters. Alexander Hamilton begins in explaining his views on the independence on judge and evaluates the doctrine of the judicial review. Resulting in the Court believing that the Supreme Court violated part of the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton then evaluates the question of whether the Supreme Court should be able to declare acts of Congress null and void. Hamilton focuses on his three main points of the judicial department. First: the mode of appointing judges.
Conservatism really strengthened in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Richard Nixon and Gerald ford were able to draw people to the Conservative side. Ultimately, numerous Democrats and Moderates switched their political view to Conservatism and became Republicans. This movement dramatically weekend the liberal side. From 1968 to 1982, four out of the five presidents were republican.
Flentje and Aistrup utilize statistic data when they analyze voting statistics as well as demographical variables collected in the census. They also place emphasis on economic data when trying to explain the rural-urban divide in the state by classifying counties based on per capita income levels. For example, in the introduction the authors state “The per capita income of the five urban counties was $40,240 in 2006, and their population growth for the thirty-six-year period was 48.7 percent” (Flentje and Aistrup xxi). Additionally, there are several chapters and subsections of the book devoted entirely to historical analysis of Kansas politics and how certain institutions have developed over time. The authors also make use of the method of personal observation to support their claims in this book.
In the piece titled” Public Opinion in Supreme Court Confirmations,” Jonathan Kastellec presents the role of the public’s opinion in the Supreme courts final decision on who will serve on the bench. Kastellec presents the idea of electoral incentives by senators tying the Supreme Court nominations directly back to the public. Nevertheless, public opinion influences the votes of the individuals who ultimately cast the ballot. Therefore, decisions on who sits on the court aren’t only in the hands of the president or the senate to decide. In the grand scheme of events, there is a connection between the Supreme Court and the American public.
Given the legal nature of the gerrymandering issue, there is an extensive legal background on the issue since the ninetieth century. This literature review gives the more relevant legal background regarding Pennsylvania’s current situation, as well as background information on the novel ways that policy-makers and researchers measure political gerrymandering. Keeping the legal background and measurement procedures in context, there are also legislative reforms and commission procedures that states have taken in order to ameliorate the problems that arise from gerrymandering. A. Constitutionality & Legal Background The Pennsylvania State Constitution contains relevant clauses that must be applied to any redistricting plan.
In order to be able to see how term limits affect elections of places, it is important to examine some electoral environment features in Michigan and California. These features include present open seats number, the turn out number of citizens, and whether the elections were competitive or if the voters had to choose among many candidates who were qualified. To be able to determine whether the open seats have an effect on electoral competition it is important to view the available races and where a reelection was run by an incumbent. Looking at term limits law in Michigan before they came into effect in 1998 most
Most people might say that President Bush and President Reagan are like comparing vinegar and water they are complete opposite good leaders but yet they were not historical figures. Bush said I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save free market system. Those words would never have been said by Regan, as Bush did a massive spending spree in his last weeks of presidency. Bush claims to be the conservative that Reagan was, early on in his career he challenged the GOP, which Regan won in 1980, Bush and other republican challengers thought his conservatism would be rejected by the voters. It is known that Regan’s record in all aspects is inferior to Bush by advancing conservative principles.
We see multiple successes of voting equality attempted through amendments, however, the Supreme Court’s decision on Shelby County v. Holder has pushed back years and years of effort for voting rights. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling was in Shelby County’s favor, stating that the Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional along with Section 5. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr, who wrote the majority’s opinion, said that the power to regulate election was reserved to the states, not the federal government. As a result to the court’s decision, the federal government can no longer determine which voting law discriminates and can be passed. After the case, many states had freely passed new voting laws; the most common voting law states passed
Alex Frost Values: Law & Society 9/23/2014 The Hollow Hope Introduction and Chapter 1 Gerald Rosenberg begins his book by posing the questions he will attempt to answer for the reader throughout the rest of the text: Under what conditions do courts produce political and social change? And how effective have the courts been in producing social change under such past decisions as Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education? He then works to define some of the principles and view points 'currently' held about the US Supreme court system.
The Texas judicial system is bifurcated, where there are two supreme courts to serve justice. While one of the “highest courts” serves justice to civil cases, the other serves justice to criminal cases. Tom Phillips, former chief justice on the Texas Supreme Court, stated “Of the ways you can elect judges, Texas has one of the worst systems” (Chammah). Judicial elections in Texas have been impacted greatly by campaign contributions from interests’ groups, PAC’s, and law firms. In addition, partisan elections and low voter knowledge has made it more facile for these interest group to lobby their way into the legislative branch, thus, spreading into the judicial branch where elections count the most.
Gerrymandering is a practice established to give an advantage to one political party over another by manipulating district boundaries. Gerrymandering all started in 1812 when Governor Gerry signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party. It was also used for racial reasons throughout history. The main goal of gerrymandering is to maximize the effect of supporters' votes and to minimize the effect of opponents' votes, and parties accomplish this by using tactics such as “cracking”, “packing”, “hijacking”, and “kidnapping”. Gerrymandering is a controversial topic in the Supreme Court, and there are many positive and negative outcomes that are a result of gerrymandering including polarization.
The article Broken Bench explains the controversy over having “tiny courts” in New York State. The author, William Glaberson argues that the idea of justice within the jurisdiction of these tiny courts is unfairly decided among the justices in charge. Due to the lack of experience of these justices, it is difficult for fair justice to be dealt out. One of the major causes explained by the author for unfair justice is that the justices of the court are very inexperienced. For example, William Glaberson states, “Nearly three-quarters of the judges are not lawyers, and many — truck drivers, sewer workers or laborers — have scant grasp of the most basic legal principles.
Courts prove unsuccessful in achieving social change due to the constraints on the court’s power. Rosenburg’s assessment that courts are “an institution that is structurally challenged” demonstrates the Constrained Court view. In this view, the Court’s lack of judicial independence, inability to implement policies, and the limited nature of constitutional rights inhibit courts from producing real social reform. For activists to bring a claim to court, they must frame their goal as a right guaranteed by the constitution, leading to the courts hearing less cases (Rosenburg 11). The nature of the three branches also creates a system of checks and balances in which Congress or the executive branch can reverse a controversial decision, rendering the Court’s impact void.
Judicial selection is an intriguing topic as there are multiple ways that judges take their seat on the bench. The United States Constitution spells out how federal judges are selected and leaves it up to the individual states to establish their means for selecting judges. In federal courts, judges are appointed and it varies between appointment and election for state courts. The purpose of this paper is to examine the differences between appointments and elections (as well as the multiple types of elections) and to give an opinion as to which is the better alternative. Federal judges are appointed by the President of the United States and are confirmed on the advice and consent of the United States Senate.