Judicial Elections and Judicial Behaviour

This chapter reviews the evidence about how electing judges, rather than appointing them, affects judicial behaviour. It argues that judicial elections direct judges to respond to public preferences just as elite re-appointment mechanisms lead judges to pay increased attention to the desires of legislators and executives. Thus, there is no ‘perfect’ way to select or retain judges. Instead, reformers must decide to whom they want courts to respond and design the judiciary accordingly. Judicial elections present important (and underused) inferential opportunities for those seeking to understand judicial behaviour. Studies of elite behaviour in other institutions, the role of interest groups in elections, partisanship and the policy-making process, and the dynamics of candidate emergence in legislative elections all have obvious implications for studies of judicial elections. But this potential can only be realized if researchers are willing to abandon disciplinary silos and use judicial elections to test general theories that these institutional arrangements have the potential to be.