Judicial Campaign Research Articles

NORTH CAROLINA'S 1992 APPELLATE DIVISION ELECTIONS: MIXED SIGNALS FOR THE FUTURE

During the course of the last several decades a national trend of more contested, costly, and acrimonious judicial campaigns has emerged. In this regard, these contests have begun to take on the characteristics of races for high profile offices. During the 1980s North Carolina's elections for its court of appeals and supreme court followed these trends. The Republican Party in the state, prior to the 1980s, had generally not contested these races. However, over the course of the last decade Republicans suddenly began to challenge the Democrats for seats on the two appellate division courts, and to do so quite competitively. Just as suddenly, in 1992 there was a reversal of Republican strategy as they contested only four out of ten seats in the appellate division. This article analyzes the 1992 election cycle and its significance in relation to the aforementioned statewide and national trends.

"New-Style" Judicial Campaigns and the Voters: Economic Issues and Union Members in Ohio

"New-Style" Judicial Campaigns and the Voters: Economic Issues and Union Members in Ohio

"New-Style" Judicial Campaigns and the Voters: Economic Issues and Union Members in Ohio

"New-Style" Judicial Campaigns and the Voters: Economic Issues and Union Members in Ohio

Campaign contributions in Texas Supreme Court races

One of the most disturbing features of an elective judiciary is judicial campaign finance. This paper explores the financing of the 1988 Texas Supreme Court races, probably the most expensive partisan judicial election campaign in history. It examines the sources of the funding of those six seats on the court in terms of competition among interest groups for control of the court. It also examines proposed reforms in the system of campaign finance and points out that those reforms are not neutral tools of “good government”, but that instead they have massive political implications for the interests vying to influence the direction of tort law in the state.

Safeguarding the Litigant's Constitutional Right to a Fair and Impartial Forum: A Due Process Approach to Improprieties Arising from Judicial Campaign Contributions from Lawyers

Safeguarding the Litigant's Constitutional Right to a Fair and Impartial Forum: A Due Process Approach to Improprieties Arising from Judicial Campaign Contributions from Lawyers

Penny for Your Thoughts? Campaign Spending in California Trial Court Elections, 1976-1982

S INCE Alexander Heard (1960) published his seminal work on political finance, scholars have been interested in understanding more about the role of money in election campaigns. As with other kinds of electoral research, attention focused initially upon the costs of presidential campaigns (Alexander 1962, 1966, 1971), followed thereafter by analyses of spending in U.S. senatorial and congressional elections and state gubernatorial and legislative elections (Adamany 1969, 1972; Owens 1973). To date, however, there has been almost no research on the amounts of money spent by candidates seeking elective judicial positions (see Berg 1980; Slead 1981; Schotland 1985). Although there is now a fairly substantial body of literature on various other aspects of judicial elections (see Volcansek 1982), very little systematic evidence has been collected on how much judicial candidates spend and even less is known about what factors influence those spending levels.1 Although knowing how much and why campaigns cost what they do has been important for understanding the role of money in elections generally, this knowledge is especially critical for an assessment of the role of money in judicial elections. In the first place, in states where recent judicial campaigns have been hotly contested, such as California, it is widely believed that judicial campaign costs have become prohibitively high for most candidates and growing higher with each year. Such reports naturally limit electoral competition by discouraging prospective candidates even if campaign finance levels have not in fact escalated sharply. As Adamany (1972) has noted, campaign fundraising for many candidates becomes a barrier to office expectations are pegged to the highest expenditures in previous campaigns and because the information about such expenditures is elusive and often inflated (p. 34). Another aspect of the role of money that has drawn recent attention has been the reported heavy reliance upon lawyers for the contributions required to finance judicial campaigns. This reliance troubles many observers who foresee the potential for a real or perceived conflict of interest (see Schotland 1985: 61-65, 90-96). As one California judge put it, What would you think if you were a litigant in my court and you knew the op-

The Exclusion of Women from the Judicial Process

Previous articleNext article No AccessRevisions/ReportsThe Exclusion of Women from the Judicial ProcessSusan TolchinSusan Tolchin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 2, Number 4Summer, 1977 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/493417 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1977 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Mary Walsh, Teri Walker, Brian Patterson, Phillip Hardy “So Many Open Doors?”: An Examination of Gender Stereotypes in State Judicial Campaign Advertisements, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy 37, no.44 (Aug 2016): 417–438.https://doi.org/10.1080/1554477X.2016.1198655