Search

This article proposes a new cross-national thesis for judicial decision making. The judicial politicization theory posits that judges on highly politicized high courts will be more likely to decide cases using ideological and attitudinal factors than judges at less politicized courts. The theory holds that informal norms regarding judicial appointment by the executive are more important than the formal selection mechanism in determining whether a judiciary is highly or less politicized. The results show significant attitudinal judicial voting at each high court and strong support for the contention that judges on highly politicized courts are more likely to decide cases ideologically. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While theoretical justifications predict that a judge's gender and race may influence judicial decisions, empirical support for these arguments has been mixed. However, recent increases in judicial diversity necessitate a reexamination of these earlier studies. Rather than examining individual judges on a single characteristic, such as gender or race alone, this research note argues that the intersection of individual characteristics may provide an alternative approach for evaluating the effects of diversity on the federal appellate bench. The results of cohort models examining the joint effects of race and gender suggest that minority female judges are more likely to support criminal defendants' claims when compared to their colleagues on the bench, even after controlling for other important factors. This suggests that our understanding of judicial behaviors may be assisted by the inclusion of how individual characteristics overlap rather than examining those characteristics alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assesses the attitudinal dimension that dominates judicial decision- making in Canadian context. Examination of the voting behavior of Canadian Supreme Court Justices in non-unanimous post-Charter cases; Disclosure of principal dimensions underlying the voting behavior; Observation of cases scoring.