JUDICIAL BACKGROUNDS AND CRIMINAL CASES.

This paper explores the empirical relationships between various background and attitudinal characteristics of judges and their decisions in criminal cases. The judges analyzed consist of the 313 state and federal supreme court judges listed in the 1955 Directory of American Judges, 15 judges so listed left the bench before the end of the year, however, and as a result were included in only certain portions of the study. Each judge was given a decision score representing the proportion of times he voted for the defense out of all the times he voted in the criminal cases. In 1955, 15 bipartisan state and federal supreme courts decided at least one non-unanimous criminal case on which all their judges sat. These courts were comprised of 85 judges who gave a party affiliation in the sources consulted. The California Supreme Court illustrates this statistically significant difference. Other supreme courts in which the Democrats had a higher average decision score for the defense than did the Republicans include the supreme courts of Colorado, Idaho, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, Rhode Island, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania. Many of the judges were members of pressure groups which endorse various kinds of legislation. A higher percentage of judges who went to low tuition law schools had decision scores above the average for their respective courts than did judges who went to high tuition law schools. The correlation between a judge's position on background characteristics and his relative degree of sympathy for lower economic and social groups may account for the differences found concerning party, pressure groups, religion, and liberal-conservative attitudes.