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Measuring the Professionalization of U.S. State Courts of Last Resort

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Peverill Squire
Peverill Squire*
Affiliation:
University of Missouri
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Abstract

Elsewhere I have argued that measures of U.S. state legislative professionalization assess individual and organizational capacity to generate and evaluate information in the policymaking process. In this article, I adapt my measure of state legislative professionalization to state courts of last resort, attempting to assess the informational capacity of those bodies in making legal decisions. Specifically, I examine judicial salaries, a court's level of control over its docket, and the number of law clerks employed by the justices. After presenting four variants of the court professionalization measure and investigating their validity, I examine explanations for their observed variance across the states. I conclude by comparing my indices with existing indices and speculating about the utility of such measures.

Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , Fall 2008 , pp. 223 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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