Judicial Recruitment Research Articles

Judicial recruitment in post-communist context: informal dynamics and façade reforms

ABSTRACT This article focuses on judicial recruitment in post-communist countries and highlights gaps between law and practice which are due to intervening informal dynamics. The case study on Georgia is suitable to explore the power of informality in increasingly formalized systems of decision-making and also in the ones that allocate considerable powers to judges. The article draws inspiration from and contributes to the limited but growing scholarship on informality in judicial governance. It relies on extensive empirical research to discern informal criteria and methods for selecting judges which embody the interests and preferences of the judicial elite and turn elaborate formal rules and procedures into the convenient façade that covers up informal dealings. It signals that recruitment mechanisms, even if structured to eliminate independence-threatening dynamics, can emerge as means of perpetuating the mentality of conformity and help prevent the consolidation of counter-elites willing and able to challenge the dominance of the incumbent leadership.

Influence of International Law Standards in the Field of Judges Labor Protection and European Integration on the Reform of National Law

The legal regulation of the work of judges is important at the international level, confirming the huge number of international legal acts regulating this issue. A number of important documents have been adopted at the regional level, namely under the auspices of the Council of Europe and the EU.
 The provisions of the Law of Ukraine “On Judiciary and Status of Judges” of 2016 are analyzed. The relations between Ukraine and the EU in the aspect of justice and judicial reform in accordance with the Association Agreement and the impact of such cooperation on the legislation of Ukraine are considered. We can argue for the unconditional influence of the rules of international law on the updated Law of 2016 in the context of a clear definition of the criteria for the selection of candidates for the post of judge.
 The article reveals the peculiarities of the influence of the international legal norms and standards of the Council of Europe and the EU in the matter of securing the labor rights of judges and regulating the issue of legal relations with judges. The article compares the compliance of Ukrainian legislation with international legal standards. In addition, the author proposes changes that need to be made to the legislation of Ukraine in order to ensure the protection of the labor rights of judges and increase the efficiency of the judicial system of Ukraine.
 Having considered violations of labor rights and court decisions on these issues, as well as norms of international law and legislation of European countries, the author proposes to introduce a number of important changes in Ukrainian laws. In particular, it is advisable to make changes to regulate the housing issue of judges by the selection of criteria that are put forward to a candidate for judicial office, recruitment procedures and grounds for dismissal of a judge for professional unfitness. Thus, all relevant changes will not only make adjustments to ensure the labor rights of judges and their protection to international law, but will also serve as additional grounds for maintaining the impartiality and efficiency of the judicial system in Ukraine.

Reforming judicial recruitment and training in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia under EU guidance: implementation without institutionalisation?

ABSTRACT How successful is the EU at institutionalising judicial reforms in accession countries of the Western Balkans? Does its aid and assistance deliver formal compliance and sustainable institutionalisation of new rules and processes? Using a neo-institutionalist approach, we assess the extent to which new EU-supported measures introduced to improve the recruitment and training of judges and public prosecutors in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are being implemented and institutionalised. We conclude that whilst there is clear evidence of implementation and a widely-held belief in both countries that judicial training and recruitment are improving as a consequence, the institutionalization of new rules and procedures is a far more complex process. It involves continual negotiation between different domestic actors against a backdrop of perpetual threats to undermine new formal rules.

Recruiting European Judges in the Age of Judicial Self-Government

AbstractThrough the recruitment of judges — their selection and subsequent appointment – powerful actors control who enters the judicial ranks and under what circumstances. In this paper I address how are European judges recruited using examples from ten European countries, while paying special attention to the role of the judicial self-government in these processes. Indeed, there are differences between recruitment processes across Europe. In some countries, a central role in the judicial recruitment is played by judicial schools; elsewhere crucial powers belong to judicial councils and/or other bodies of judicial self-government; in the UK or Ireland some of these powers were vested in the hands of specialized bodies; whereas in other countries the process remains less formal with crucial powers resting in the hands of court presidents. Despite these differences, I choose to emphasize similarities recruitment processes share. They operate as funnels where the pool of candidates gradually decreases until only one (or few) remains and is eventually appointed. In order to assume judicial office one usually must (a) meet eligibility criteria, (b) get on selector's radar to be actively considered for the position, (c) get shortlisted for the position, (d) get selected, and (e) eventually appointed. Dividing the recruitment process into these stages, while paying attention to motivations of all involved actors, can help deepen our understanding of how judicial recruitment actually works and how formal and informal rules together shape the composition of judiciaries.

Demographic Projections of Demand for Criminal Court Services Across New South Wales, Australia

Demographic projections can provide an evidential basis for the assessment of the future demand for criminal court services and facilities, and the future need for related staff, such as judges and magistrates. This chapter assesses the implications of projected changes in the size, composition and geographical distribution of the population of New South Wales (Australia) for the volume and geospatial dimensions of crime-related court service provision. The method involves application of court appearance rates by age, sex and local area to projections of the population. The results illustrate the pivotal importance of uncertainty relating to whether recent general declines in court appearance rates will continue. Under the assumption of constant court appearance rates, total court appearances are projected to increase by 18 % between 2012 and 2031. This is less than the 27 % projected growth of the population because of the concomitant increase in the share of older people, who have a lower propensity to appear before the courts. The projected percentage increases in court appearances are generally greater in Sydney, especially in Western and South-Western Sydney, whilst reductions are projected in regional New South Wales. In contrast, under the assumption of a linear extrapolation of trends in court appearance rates since 2002, a 10 % reduction in total court appearances between 2012 and 2031 is projected. The implications of the results for policies relating to court demand mitigation, judicial recruitment and retirement, judicial productivity, the provision of court infrastructure, and the geospatial dimensions of court service provision are discussed.

Bilingual Legislation: Awareness, Ambiguity, and Attitudes

The laws made by the National Assembly for Wales and the Welsh Ministers are almost invariably made in both English and Welsh, and the Government of Wales Act provides that such laws made bilingually ‘are to be treated for all purposes as being of equal standing’. While these laws apply only in relation to Wales, they extend to England and Wales, so that the law of England and Wales now has within it a body of rules expressed bilingually. This development brings with it both challenges and benefits—for those who prepare those laws, for those who deliberate and decide upon them, and for those who have to administer and interpret them. The full implications of this—for legal education and practice, for judicial recruitment, and for the structure of the courts system—have yet to be fully worked out. This article examines the greater linguistic awareness which this new situation requires, the opportunities which it affords to avoid imprecision, and the questions which it poses for approaches to statutory interpretation.

New Measures of Judges’ Caseload for the Federal District Courts, 1964–2012

AbstractOver the past 30 years many observers of the federal courts have expressed concern over mounting dockets, arguing that the taxing workloads for federal judges could have a variety of negative consequences, including difficulties in judicial recruitment and retention. However, assessing the plausibility of those and similar claims requires the use of appropriate measures of judges’ workload. We introduce scholars and practitioners to new measures of caseload for the district courts available from 1964 through 2012. We detail the methodology for constructing our measures and then assess changes in caseload over time, both within and across courts. We argue that, in most cases, the preferred measure of caseload incorporates weighted filings and accounts for the service of senior status judges and vacancies. We conclude by pointing scholars toward additional research avenues that can be undertaken with our publicly available data.

Judges on Trial

Extant research on the effects of judicial background characteristics suggests minimal influence from the race or gender of the sentencing judge in criminal cases. This raises at least two possibilities: (1) the combined influence of judicial recruitment, indoctrination, and socialization into the judgeship results in a homogenous body of criminal court judges; or (2) current approaches to identifying judge effects in criminal sentencing have methodological and conceptual flaws that limit their ability to detect important influences from judicial background characteristics. The current article examines this issue with data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing that is augmented to include information on sentencing judges and criminal court contexts. It argues that the mode of conviction shapes the locus of sentencing discretion in ways that systematically underestimate judge effects for pooled estimates of incarceration and sentence length. The empirical results support this interpretation, especially for incarceration in trial cases, where older, female, and minority judges are substantially less likely to sentence offenders to jail or prison terms. The article concludes with a discussion of future research directions and policy implications for judge effects and disparity in sentencing.

Profissionalismo e diferença de gênero na magistratura paulista

This article focuses on the changes in the gender composition of the Sao Paulo magistrature, which occurred simultaneously to the judicial reform process. The argument is that the Appellate Court adopted strategies of judicial recruitment and control to maintain itself as an elite public career. The Tribunal de Justica de Sao Paulo had to deal with an external environment claiming for the judicial reform as well as a more heterogeneous internal environment. In this context, it gave centrality to the professional posture, searching to restore homogeneity through the collective identification of magistrate. The article conceptualizes the difference and suggests forms of how it is interpretated within the magistrature. The difference stands out as subjectivity, as part of the interiority, presenting a shared corporality that distinguishes the group and that produces its symbolic efficacy. The empiric base for the study is the data gathered by the project Professionalism and gender in the legal careers, sponsored by CNPq, with quantitative data, 20 qualitative interviews, and documental sources.

Judges on Trial: A Reexamination of Judicial Race and Gender Effects Across Modes of Conviction

Extant research on the effects of judicial background characteristics suggests minimal influence from the race or gender of the sentencing judge in criminal cases. This raises at least two possibilities: 1) the combined influence of judicial recruitment, indoctrination and socialization into the judgeship results in a homogenous body of criminal court judges, or 2) current approaches to identifying judge effects in criminal sentencing have methodological and conceptual flaws that limit their ability to detect important influences from judicial background characteristics. The current paper argues that the mode of conviction shapes the locus of sentencing discretion in ways that systematically underestimate judge effects for pooled estimates of incarceration and sentence length. The empirical results support this interpretation, especially for incarceration in trial cases, where older, female, and minority judges are substantially less likely to sentence offenders to jail or prison terms.

Political uncertainty's effect on judicial recruitment and retention: Japan in the 1990s

Because of the risk of political interference, in countries with managed courts, jurists who share ruling-party preferences disproportionately self-select into judicial instead of private careers. During political turmoil, such jurists will find judicial careers less attractive. Orthodox potential jurists will disproportionately shun the courts, and orthodox incumbent judges will disproportionately resign. Unorthodox potential jurists, on the other hand, might find the judiciary more attractive. Combining data on a random sample of 1605 Japanese lawyers and on all 2502 judges hired between 1971 and 2001, we locate evidence consistent with these hypotheses: after the political crisis of 1993, the recruitment of young lawyers from elite universities lagged, while the number of early resignations increased. Journal of Comparative Economics 35 (2) (2007) 329–345.

Judicial Delegation Doctrines: The US, Britain, and France

Legislatures frequently enact primary legislation that delegates secondary law making powers to administrative agencies. Judicial review designed to ensure that this secondary legislation is in accord with the primary legislation necessarily involves judicial interpretation of the primary legislation and hence also some degree of judicial law making. Both the relative degree of judicial law making and its causes may vary from country to country. Judicial review of secondary legislation in three countries is examined. Judicial activism is great in the United States and probably related both to congressional inefficiency in passing amending statutes and judicial recruitment and career patterns. The level of judicial activism in the UK has been low but may be increasing. It is severely constrained by the capacity of parliament rapidly to 'correct' judicial interpretations but encouraged by judicial career patterns. The formal decisions of the French Council of State show little judicial intervention against administrators' secondary legislation but such intervention may occur extensively at the stage of agency regulation drafting rather than through formal review processes.

Review Essay on Judicial Recruitment and Selection

Introduction Research in area of recruitment and of judges for state and federal tribunals has historically occupied a home near center of concerns of judicial politics scholars, legal practitioners, and nonprofessional analysts and observers of American judicial systems. As noted by Dubois, It is fairly certain that no single subject has consumed as many pages in law reviews and law-related publications over past 50 years as subject of judicial selection (1986a:31). (For a representative annotated bibliography see Chinn and Berkson [1980].) Underlying this concern is premise stated by Peltason (1955:29) that the decision as to who will make deci sions affects what decisions will be made. The scene in which discussion unfolds is set by premise that courts occupy a unique position in American political system for, while ours is a government of laws and not men, judiciary, nevertheless (and, perhaps, ironically) clearly plays a major policymaking role. A great deal has been written about judicial re cruitment and selection, but it has been argued that much allegedly social scientific scholarship has been of a rather polemical nature, with authors joining a debate aimed at deciding which method of judicial is and most suited to bringing about an often inadequately articulated, but clearly preferred result. The focal point for such writing is often bal ance that a particular mechanism strikes between values of ac countability of American judges, arguably maximized in electorally-based systems, and judicial independence and expertise, arguably best served by appointive systems (see Dubois, 1986a). Skeptical analysts have, however, questioned relevance of research seeking answer to largely normative question of which judicial selec

Assessing Judicial Elections: Effects Upon the Electorate of High and Low Articulation Systems

AN UNAVOIDABLE tension between two important aims of government is built into modern state judiciaries.1 Judges, as major governmental actors, perform two distinct functions namely, that of resolving individual disputes between litigants and, on increasingly frequent occasion, that of establishing directions for public policy. Clearly, to resolve conflicts between contending litigants jurists must remain independent of the interests of those parties. Fairness and due process demand no less. However, on those frequent occasions when judicial decisions affect much of the citizenry, judges must be held accountable for those decisions. Democracy demands no less. Consequently, while judges must be independent of public pressures to settle disputes fairly, they must also be subject to public accountability for decisions that carry broad public import.2 This inevitable tension between judicial independence and public accountability is encountered directly in the consideration of judicial recruitment (Wasby 1978: 155; Nejelski 1975). It is precisely through the process of recruitment that expectations regarding accountability and independence are exchanged between judicial recruiters and would-be recruits. Our concern in this study is to determine the impact of variations in judicial selection circumstances on the attitudes and behavior of one of the major types of recruitment actors in the process the judicial voter. How do different recruitment systems influence the behavior of the electorate, and how do they affect the attitudes of thejudicial voter toward the accountability-independence dilemma?

Judicial Selection Systems and Nomination Outcomes

This article examines the importance of formal judicial selection systems for understanding the outcomes of judicial recruitment. Data collected concerning appointments of the Carter administration demonstrate that selection processes per se made little difference in the nature of the appointments made. The data also suggest that the identity of the political actor primarily responsible for generating the names of judgeship candidates may be a more important concern for understanding selection outcomes than formal selection processes.

Social Backgrounds and Judicial Recruitment: A Nineteenth-Century Perspective on the Lower Federal Judiciary

Social Backgrounds and Judicial Recruitment: A Nineteenth-Century Perspective on the Lower Federal Judiciary

Social Backgrounds and Judicial Recruitment: a Nineteenth-Century Perspective On the Lower Federal Judiciary

Social Backgrounds and Judicial Recruitment: a Nineteenth-Century Perspective On the Lower Federal Judiciary

Formal Judicial Recruitment and State Supreme Court Decisions

Formal Judicial Recruitment and State Supreme Court Decisions

Johnson and Nixon Appointees to the Lower Federal Courts: Some Socio- Political Perspectives

Previous articleNext article No AccessResearch NotesJohnson and Nixon Appointees to the Lower Federal Courts: Some Socio- Political PerspectivesSheldon GoldmanSheldon Goldman Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 34, Number 3Aug., 1972 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2129289 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 7Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1972 Southern Political Science AssociationPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Margaret Williams Women's Representation on State Trial and Appellate Courts, Social Science Quarterly 88, no.55 (Dec 2007): 1192–1204.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2007.00498.xMark S. Hurwitz, Drew Noble Lanier Explaining Judicial Diversity: The Differential Ability of Women and Minorities to Attain Seats on State Supreme and Appellate Courts, State Politics & Policy Quarterly 3, no.44 (Aug 2016): 329–352.https://doi.org/10.1177/153244000300300401Alissa Pollitz Worden The judge's role in plea bargaining: An analysis of judges' agreement with prosecutors' sentencing recommendations, Justice Quarterly 12, no.22 (Aug 2006): 257–278.https://doi.org/10.1080/07418829500092671Richard C. Feiock Support for Business in the Federal District Courts, American Politics Quarterly 17, no.11 (Nov 2016): 96–104.https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X8901700105Elliot E. Slotnick Review Essay on Judicial Recruitment and Selection, Justice System Journal 13, no.11 (Sep 2014): 109–124.https://doi.org/10.1080/23277556.1988.10871089 C. K. Rowland , Robert A. Carp , and Ronald A. Stidham Judges' Policy Choices and the Value Basis of Judicial Appointments: A Comparison of Support for Criminal Defendants among Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy Appointees to the Federal District Courts, The Journal of Politics 46, no.33 (Oct 2015): 886–902.https://doi.org/10.2307/2130860 Michael W. Giles , and Thomas G. Walker Judicial Policy-Making and Southern School Segregation, The Journal of Politics 37, no.44 (Oct 2015): 917–936.https://doi.org/10.2307/2129183