Why do judges sometimes rule against autocrats’ preferences even when judicial independence and secure tenure are absent? Common explanations point to strategic defection under weak governments. This study shows that a different dynamic can produce similar behavior under strong autocrats who monitor selectively: when oversight focuses on the most severe political cases, judges can gain room for maneuver by downplaying case severity to avoid triggering scrutiny.
Are corruption trials that target top public officials and big companies biased? Existing work focuses mostly on prosecutions of politicians and leaves unclear whether judges treat the political class differently from other defendants, including private-sector actors. This study investigates judicial bias in Brazil’s Operação Lava Jato, the largest corruption investigation in history.
This study asks whether renewable terms compromise judicial independence by creating incentives for judges to curry favor with actors who control their reappointment. Using a 2010 reform at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) that made judges’ terms nonrenewable with immediate effect, the author estimates how removing reappointment opportunities changed judges’ voting behavior on cases involving their nominating states. The paper’s contribution is a focused causal test of the reappointment mechanism versus selection explanations for pro-state voting.
This paper provides the first causal estimates of how presidential judicial appointments shape outcomes in federal district court civil rights cases. Using an original dataset of about 70,000 cases and nearly 200 judges, the analysis examines whether assignment to a Democratic- or Republican-appointed judge changes the likelihood of settlement, dismissal, or other outcomes.
Authorship in U.S. circuit courts often reflects gender and racial disparities.
Why do some politicians block Supreme Court nominations? New research suggests their votes depend partly on the departing justice's ideology. The analysis finds that U.S. senators evaluate nominees along two main ideological axes: their own distance from the nominee and the potential shift in the court's median vote after confirmation. Crucially, this study reveals an additional factor influencing opposition: senators also react to how much a nominee contrasts ideologically with the departing justice.