Rick HasenVerified account

#ELB: New Paper of Mine forthcoming in the Annual Review of Political Science: “Polarization and the Judiciary” http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97943 

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:

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

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.

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 ...

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.