Academic

Challenges to Judicial Databases

Posted on July 17, 2009
I’m so pleased that Jeff and Andy invited me to blog for Voir Dire. The first item I wanted to raise to readers involves the federal judicial databases that Harold Spaeth (Supreme Court Database) and Don Songer (U.S. Court of Appeals Database) developed for public use using funding from the National Science Foundation...

When baseball and judicial politics scholars collide

Posted on July 16, 2009
it makes headlines — Judicial politics scholar Chris Zorn (and methodologist Jeff Gill) are featured in the Wall Street Journal discussing the DH rule and political ideology.

?For the times they are a changin? ? explaining justice drift

Posted on July 15, 2009
I recently posted on SSRN a paper by myself and two Georgia graduate students, Brian Levey and Justin Moeller. The title is: “For The Times They Are A Changin: Explaining U.S. Supreme Court Justices’ Voting Through Identification of Micro-Publics...

Bruno-mania

Posted on July 15, 2009
Last Friday, I received a phone call from a reporter with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She was in the process of writing a story regarding Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie, Bruno. The story centered on an effort by Movieguide, which is published by the pro-family values interest group Christian Film & Television Commission, to convince [...

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New guest blogger ? Stefanie Lindquist

Posted on July 13, 2009
Please join me in welcoming Stefanie Lindquist to Voir Dire as a guest contributor to the blog. Stefanie is the Thomas W. Gregory Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law. She is the author of numerous articles on a variety of law and courts topics and has authored two books, Judging [...

Guest blogger featured

Posted on July 12, 2009
Voir Dire guest blogger Paul Collins had his work featured recently on the ELS Blog and the Conglomerate Blog. The featured paper, c0-authored with Pamela Corley and Brian Calvin, uses content analysis software (aka plagiarism software) to examine the extent to which SCOTUS opinion writers “lift” content from the lower court opinions they are reviewing...

The Place of Women on the Court

Posted on July 12, 2009
In today’s New York Times Magazine, Emily Bazelon has a very interesting interview with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – a small sample below the fold: Q: At your confirmation hearings in 1993, you talked  about how you hoped to see three or four women on the court...

Public Support for the Sotomayor Nomination

Posted on July 10, 2009
This morning, CNN released the results of a survey regarding public support for Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court.  About 47% of Americans support confirmation while 40% oppose it (13% had “no opinion”).  To provide context, these results suggest that she is faring better than Harriet Miers did at this point...

The Goals of Campaign Finance Law

Posted on July 08, 2009
First of all, many thanks to Jeff and Andy for inviting me to guest blog this summer at Voir Dire.  My primary interests are in elections and American government broadly, but the ongoing controversy surrounding judicial elections, along with the encouragement of friends & collaborators, continues to pull me further into the study of judicial [...

Sotomayor Rated ?Well Qualified? by the ABA

Posted on July 08, 2009
The American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Judiciary has unanimously rated Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ?well qualified??the highest rating a nominee can receive. As a District Court nominee, a ?substantial majority? of the panel gave her a ?qualified? rating, while a minority rated her ?well qualified...

Howard Dean on American healthcare ?

Posted on July 07, 2009
… in Esquire magazine. A sample below the fold. ESQUIRE:Your book really lays everything out in a very simple, clear way. It’s obvious this is something you’ve been thinking about for a long time. HOWARD DEAN:It was one of the reasons I ran for president...

Keeping up with the literature

Posted on July 07, 2009
One of the things I (and I am sure others) struggle with is keeping up with the current literature.  Even in a field that seems small (like Law and Courts) there are dozens (if not more) new articles every year that are of interest.  Between producing my own stuff, teaching, administrative responsibilities, baseball games, trips [...

On judicial ?qualifications?

Posted on July 05, 2009
Over the past few days, there has been an interesting (?) discussion on the Law and Courts Listserv over the nature of judicial qualifications.  Specifically, the issue seems to boil down to whether or not the executive (or judicial nominating commission) should recommend/nominate the “most qualified” individual or a person/slate of people who are all [...

Which states have the best (and worst) high courts?

Posted on July 03, 2009
Want to know? You’ll have to check it out in a paper by the same name authored by Stephen Choi, G. Mitu Gulati, and Eric Posner. It’s available on SSRN here. I tell you what, I’ll give you the top five contenders for (best overall) state high courts and the abstract below the fold...

Welcoming new guest contributor

Posted on July 02, 2009
I’d like to welcome another summer guest contributor to our blog – Damon Cann. Damon is an assistant professor of political science at Utah State University. His research includes work on Congress as well as work on state courts. He is the author of Sharing the Wealth: Member Contributions and the Exchange Theory of Party [...

Cool baseball graphics

Posted on July 01, 2009
In keeping with the current baseball theme, I present some cool baseball graphics from flipflopflyball.com. Here’s one on teams breaking the racial barrier. Here’s one showing the relative height of Boston’s Green Monster: And, finally, one that shows Major League Baseball relocations: hat tip to buzzfeed

Rivera?s Historic (?) 500th Save?

Posted on June 30, 2009
One of the things that is great about sports is that every game you have the chance of seeing something you have never seen before.  In that sense, it is the ultimate reality TV.  The other night, while watching the Yankees-Mets game (apologies to Mets fan Bob Howard), we witnessed such a moment...

On the new legal economy

Posted on June 30, 2009
Two interesting things to examine on the new legal economy: First, Bill Henderson has a very interesting post on ELS. Check out the differences in salary distribution in 1991 and 2007 that he documents and discusses: Second, a very intriguing take on the latest developments of the legal economy downturn for big firms and the downturn’s ramifications [...

The Joy of Minor League Baseball

Posted on June 30, 2009
Following up on Chris? excellent post regarding Mariano Rivera?s 500th save, I thought I?d share a quick post encouraging readers to check out a minor league baseball game. Why? 1) They are cheap. While it?s easy to spend upwards of $75 a ticket on a major league baseball game, one can typically get great seats at a [...

Why the Supreme Court Got It Wrong in the Massey case

Posted on June 28, 2009
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Caperton v. Massey (http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/08-22.pdf).  In this landmark ruling, the Court held that a judge must recuse himself/herself if there was an appearance of impropriety.  In this case, the CEO of Massey Energy (which had a case in the legal pipeline that was likely to be heard by the West [...

Introducing new contributor ? Chris Bonneau

Posted on June 28, 2009
Please welcome a new summer contributor to our blog, Chris Bonneau. Chris is an associate professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh. He has authored multiple articles on law and courts topics and is the author of two books, Strategic Behavior and Policy Choice on the U...

How Liberal is Sonia Sotomayor?

Posted on June 26, 2009
One of the problems in answering questions as to how liberal or conservative a judge might be is coming up with some acceptable measure of ideology. There is no generally accepted measure of lower court ideology. A judge?s own partisan affiliation and the ideology of a judge?s appointing president have often been employed as useful [...

Intradisciplinary Communication

Posted on June 26, 2009
A decade ago, it was fairly common for students of law and courts to lament the lack of interdisciplinary communication between political scientists, law professors, and scholars from other disciplines (e.g., Cross 1997; Rosenberg 2000). Fortunately, much has changed in the past decade...

Can Ray break this?

Posted on June 24, 2009
… something light and fun to get you through the rest of the week – video of a guy named Ray attempting to break various items while wearing a strong man suit. The circus music and chimpanzee sounds are an especially nice touch. Thank goodness for the serious and thoughtful posting activity of our guest [...

Law, Political Science and citation rates

Posted on June 22, 2009
I want to thank Jeff and Andy for the introduction and opportunity to guest blog periodically on their website. Although I publish on all areas of law and courts, my particular area of expertise is on law and policy and I hope to blog about that in the near future...

What Drew You to the Study of Law and Courts?

Posted on June 22, 2009
I?d like to extend my sincere thanks to Jeff and Andy for the opportunity to guest blog on Voir Dire. Hopefully, the readers will find what I have to say at least marginally interesting. I plan to cover a number of topics, some academic, some not so much...

Introduction of guest contributors

Posted on June 21, 2009
I am very happy to introduce two guest contributors to our blog. As the summer progresses more guest contributors are scheduled to make appearances. The two bloggers who are beginning this week are actually both State University of New York graduates...

Lack of Judges Caused Immigration Backlog

Posted on June 20, 2009
We don’t often talk about case processing issues in the courts, but TRAC cares about it. Their new report finds: that the failure to increase immigration judges — promised by the Bush Administration in the summer of 2006 — contributed to a substantial jump in the number of backlogged cases in the Immigration Courts...

Judging the Bias of Judges? Judging

Posted on June 19, 2009
In the American Statistican: Judging bias is an inherent risk in subjectively judged sporting competitions, and recent controversies have spurred researchers to explore these biases wherever possible. Unfortunately, detailed judging results are usually unavailable to the public...

Interrupting questions during a presentation ?

Posted on June 15, 2009
The topic of unnecessary interrupting questions during a presentation (as opposed to clarification questions), eye rolling, loud sighs of exasperation, one upmanship, and generally preferring the mellifluous sound of your own voice to everyone else’s – all five year old child/ pathetic jerk behavior masquerading as evidence of intellectual rigor or academic norms – is [...

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