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Study: Elected judges issue more opinions of lesser quality

A story today in the New York Times by Adam Liptak focuses on electoral selection of judges in the US, and mentions this interesting if predictable tidbit ("Rendering justice with one eye on re-election," May 25):A working paper from the University of Chicago Law School last year tried to quantify the relative quality of elected and appointed judges in state high courts in the United States. It found that elected judges wrote more opinions, while appointed judges wrote opinions of higher quality.?A simple explanation for our results,? wrote the paper?s authors ? Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati and Eric A. Posner ? ?is that electoral judgeships attract and reward politically savvy people, while appointed judgeships attract more professionally able people...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on May 25, 2008 (boomark / email).