The relationship between de jure and de facto judicial independence is much debated in the literature on judicial politics. Some studies find no relationship between the formal rules governing the structure of the judiciary and de facto judicial independence, while others find a tight correlation. This article sets out to reassess the relationship between de jure and de facto judicial independence using a new theory and an expanded data set. De jure institutional protections, we argue, do not work in isolation but work conjunctively, so that particular combinations of protections are more likely to be effective than others. We find that rules governing the selection and removal of judges are the only de jure protections that actually enhance judicial independence in practice and that they work conjunctively. This effect is strongest in authoritarian regimes and in contexts with checks on executive authority.

Legislative enactment is only one step in the life of a law. How a law shapes public life after enactment is frequently the result of whether the judiciary interprets the provisions contained in a law and how courts reconcile provisions within and across laws. But the factors that determine whether the judiciary ends up playing such a role are not well understood. We investigate why the courts, through statutory interpretation, address some major laws but not others and why some laws are addressed soon after enactment, while others are on the books for years before they reach the judicial branch. Our evidence shows that conditions at the time of enactment, plus features of the law, play a major role in determining whether, and when, a law reaches the courts. More specifically, both divided government and disagreement between the two chambers increase the likelihood that the courts will address significant laws.

Congress routinely relies on private lawsuits to enforce its mandates. In this article, we investigate whether, when it does so, the details of the legislation can importantly influence the extent to which the private bar is mobilized to carry out the prosecutorial function. Using an original and novel data set based on review of archived litigation documents for cases filed in the Northern and Eastern Districts of California over the two decades spanning 1981–2000, we examine the effects of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which increased economic damages available to Title VII job discrimination plaintiffs, on their ability to secure counsel. We find that over the course of the decade after passage, the law substantially increased the probability that Title VII plaintiffs would be represented by counsel and that in doing so it reversed a decade-long trend in the opposite direction.

In this study, we test theories of judicial retirement developed in the United States to study patterns of retirement in Canada and England. We explore whether there is evidence that justices time their departures to strategically advance partisan or policy goals. Using survival analysis to examine the career patterns of judges appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada (1875–2012), as well as the House of Lords of the United Kingdom (1875–2009), we find that there is no evidence of strategy to achieve political objectives. Instead, these judges either choose to stay as long as possible or retire for personal reasons.

This article is the first comprehensive empirical study of chief justice appointments to the Judicial Conference committees of the US Courts, entities with influence over substantive public and legal policy. Using a newly created database of all judges appointed to serve on Judicial Conference committees between 1986 and 2012, the results indicate that a judge’s partisan alignment with the chief justice matters, as do personal characteristics such as race, experience on the bench, and court level. These results support claims that Judicial Conference committee selection, membership, and participation may present a vehicle for advancing the chief justice’s individual political and policy interests.

Scholars studying judicial behavior have identified a host of factors theoretically and empirically connected to judicial decision making. One recent theory identifies economic conditions—which have implications for the decisions of voters and politicians—as influencing the voting behavior of US Supreme Court justices. Yet the US Supreme Court is a unique judicial institution addressing limited—though indisputably important—economic cases every year. State courts, on the other hand, address a multitude of issues every year with economic ramifications. Building on the rich body of literature examining state courts of last resort, I analyze whether judges, across a variety of methods for judicial selection and retention, respond to temporary changes in the state of the economy. Results indicate that the responses of state supreme court judges to changes in the state of the economy are conditional on the electoral vulnerability of the justice. This research thus offers considerable insight into judicial behavior under different selection mechanisms and the conditional influence of the state of the economy.