#ELB: New Paper of Mine forthcoming in the Annual Review of Political Science: “Polarization and the Judiciary” http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97943
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The paper on polarization and the judiciary will be out in 2019 in the Annual Review of Political Science. I say that polarization affects the judiciary in 4 ways:
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First, polarization affects judicial selection. In times of greater polarization, governors and presidents who nominate judges, legislators who confirm judges, &n voters who vote on judicial candidates are more apt to support or oppose judges based upon partisan affiliation,cues
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Second, and driven in part by selection mechanisms, polarization may be reflected in the decisions that judges make, especially on issues that divide people politically, such as abortion, guns, or affirmative action.
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On the Supreme Court, for example, the Court often divides along party and ideological lines in votes in the most prominent and highly contested cases. Those ideological lines now overlap with party ...
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as we enter a period in which all the Court liberals have been appointed by Democratic Presidents and all the Court conservatives have been appointed by Republican Presidents.
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This has led to a surprising rise in both the number of decisions at the Supreme Court decided by one vote AND the number of unanimous decisions which are part of the Court's coordination and unifying functionpic.twitter.com/WQxaKEeCXT
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Third, increasingly polarized judicial decisions appear to be causing public to view judges and judicial decision-making though a more partisan lens, at least when considering public attitudes about the United States Supreme Court. Look at volatility of public opinion by partypic.twitter.com/ZPV5vLSelj
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Fourth, polarization may affect the separation of powers, by empowering courts against polarized legislative bodies which sometimes cannot act thanks to legislative gridlock, as my work, and Bill Eskridge's work, have shown. /fin
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