Judicial Elections in the 21st Century Law, Courts and Politics Series

Leading authorities present the latest cutting edge research on state judicial elections. Starting with recent transformations in the electoral landscape, including those brought about by U.S. Supreme Court rulings, this volume provides penetrating analyses of partisan, nonpartisan, and retention elections to state supreme courts, intermediate appellate courts, and trial courts. Topics include citizen participation, electoral competition, fundraising and spending, judicial performance evaluations, reform efforts,attack campaigns, and other organized efforts to oust judges. This volume also evaluates the impact of judicial elections on numerous aspects of American politics, including citizens? perceptions of judicial legitimacy, diversity on the bench, and the consequences of who wins on subsequent court decisions. Many of the chapters offer predictions about how judicial elections might look in the future. Overall, this collection provides a sharp evidence-based portrait of how modern judicial elections actually work in practice and their consequences for state judiciaries and the American people.

Section 1: Electing Judges in Contemporary American Politics

1. Judicial Elections in the 21st Century

[Chris W. Bonneau and Melinda Gann Hall]

2. The Changing Legal Landscape of Judicial Elections

[Charles Gardner Geyh and Katherine Thrapp]

Section 2: State Supreme Court Elections

3. Contestation and Competitiveness in State Supreme Court Elections, 1946-2015: A State-Level Analysis

[Herbert M. Kritzer]

4. Campaigning for the High Court Bench

[Melinda Gann Hall and Matthew J. Zalewski]

5. Fundraising and Spending in State Supreme Court Elections

[Chris W. Bonneau]

Chapter 6: Judicial Retention Elections

[Larry Aspin]

Section 3: State Lower Court Elections

7. The Latest Trends in Intermediate Appellate Court Elections

[Matthew J. Streb, Brian Frederick, Casey LaFrance, and Kimberly Rice]

8. Trial Court Campaign Messaging in a Post-White Environment: An Analysis of Candidate Websites in Contested Elections

[Mark Jonathan McKenzie and Ryan J. Rebe]

9. Do Judicial Performance Evaluations Influence Retention Election Results?

[Rebecca D. Gill]

Section 4: The Impact of Judicial Elections

10. Measuring the Impact of Election Outcomes on Voting in State Supreme Courts

[Lawrence Baum, Thomas R. Gray, and David Klein]

11. Judicial Elections and Support for State Courts

[Michael J. Nelson]

12. Elections and Judicial Diversity

[Drew Noble Lanier and Mark S. Hurwitz]

Section 5: Reforming the Judicial Selection Process

Chapter 13: Proposals for Reforms: Successes and Failures

[Chris W. Bonneau and Jenna Becker Kane]

Chapter 14: Conclusion

[Melinda Gann Hall and ris W. Bonneau]

Chris W. Bonneau is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His work on judicial elections has been published in the top journals in political science, and he has coauthored two books on the subject: In Defense of Judicial Elections (2009, Routledge) and Voters’ Verdicts: Citizens, Campaigns, and Institutions in State Supreme Court Elections (2015, University of Virginia Press). Additionally, he recently coedited Making Law and Courts Research Relevant: The Normative Implications of Empirical Research (2015, Routledge). Professor Bonneau currently serves as coeditor of State Politics and Policy Quarterly, one of the most influential substantive outlets for scholarship on state judicial politics.

Melinda Gann Hall is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. A pioneer in the field, her work on judicial elections spans over three decades and has been published in all of the most highly regarded journals in the discipline. She is coauthor of In Defense of Judicial Elections (2009, Routledge) and author of Attacking Judges: How Campaign Advertising Influences State Supreme Court Elections (2015, Stanford University Press).