Litigation

Scholars? Study: Voter-Shielded Judges Do Better

By Peter Hardin

It’s not the easiest reading. But a new academic paper finds that “Politically Insulated Judges are Better Judges,” according to the headline of a Think Progress blog post by Matthew Yglesias.

Here are findings excerpted from the abstract of the paper, which focuses on decisions in criminal cases in various state Supreme Courts and is entitled “To Elect or to Appoint? Bias, Information, and Responsiveness of Bureaucrats and Politicians”:

“We find that justices that are shielded from voters’ influence on average  (i) have better information, (ii) are more likely to change their preconceived opinions about a case and (iii) are more effective (make less mistakes) than their elected counterparts.”

The paper was written by Matias Iaryczower, Garrett Lewis and Matthew Shum from the CalTech Division of Humanities and Social Sciences and is available by clicking here.

Full post as published by The Gavel on April 20, 2010 (boomark / email).