Abstract
Do elected judges and prosecutors change their behavior to reflect public opinion after they receive information about constituent preferences? In this article I use a unique measure of public opinion—votes on an initiative to legalize marijuana—to examine the responsiveness of prosecutors and trial court judges to a strong, issue-specific, constituency-level opinion signal. I find that, at least in recent drug cases in Colorado, both prosecutors and judges changed their sentencing behavior after receiving that signal. Prosecutors responded only to local-level opinion, while judges responded to both local and statewide opinion.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 117-152 |
Number of pages | 36 |
Journal | Journal of Law and Courts |
Volume | 2 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 1 2014 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Law