Suchergebnisse

Introduction: enhancement, disability, and biopolitics -- Dragon slayers: exploring transhumanism -- Rethinking disability: dodging definitions, muddying models -- Rethinking enhancement: a genealogical approach -- Choosing, for choice's sake: a case study -- Disability as/at risk: the biopolitics of disability -- Conclusion: rethinking the future

Nasty, below-the-belt campaigns, mudslinging, and character attacks. These tactics have become part and parcel of today's election politics in America, and judicial elections are no exception. Attacking Judges takes a close look at the effects of televised advertising, including harsh attacks, on state supreme court elections. Author Melinda Gann Hall investigates whether these divisive elections have damaging consequences for representative democracy. To do this, Hall focuses on two key aspects of those elections: the vote shares of justices seeking reelection and the propensity of state elec

This research capitalizes on the analytical opportunity created by mandatory retirement provisions to explore the nature of the electoral connection in state supreme courts and to illustrate how changes in institutional context can modify the decisional propensities of political elites and reshape their fundamental roles. Specifically, this work demonstrates that mandatory retirement obviates the representative function by disconnecting key mechanisms through which public preferences are translated into judicial votes: threat conditions that elevate the risk of electoral censure. In state supreme courts, popular votes are in part strategic and result from a complex interaction of goals, institutions, and external pressures. Adapted from the source document.

This research capitalizes on the analytical opportunity created by mandatory retirement provisions to explore the nature of the electoral connection in state supreme courts and to illustrate how changes in institutional context can modify the decisional propensities of political elites and reshape their fundamental roles. Specifically, this work demonstrates that mandatory retirement obviates the representative function by disconnecting key mechanisms through which public preferences are translated into judicial votes: threat conditions that elevate the risk of electoral censure. In state supreme courts, popular votes are in part strategic and result from a complex interaction of goals, institutions, and external pressures.

I address the controversy over how judges should be selected by analyzing the electoral fortunes of incumbents on supreme courts from 1980 through 1995 in the 38 states using elections to staff the bench. Court reformers argue that partisan elections fail to evidence accountability, while nonpartisan and retention elections promote independence. Thus, issue-related or candidate-related forces should not be important in partisan elections, and external political conditions should not be important in nonpartisan and retention elections. Results indicate that reformers underestimated the extent to which partisan elections have a tangible substantive component and overestimated the extent to which nonpartisan and retention races are insulated from partisan politics and other contextual forces. On these two fundamental issues, arguments of reformers fail. Moreover, the extraordinary variations across systems and over time in how well incumbents fare with voters, which bear directly upon the representative nature of elected courts, merit further explanation.

This article assesses whether electoral vulnerability promotes strategic retirements in state supreme courts & whether elections are more effective in promoting democratic control of the bench than believed. Results indicate that voluntary retirements are influenced by electoral considerations, but only when justices are retained in partisan or retention elections. With nonpartisan elections, these effects are absent. Through the lens of judicial reform, these findings suggest that some arguments for abandoning partisan elections & adopting the Missouri Plan may lack merit & that the premises underlying institutional design should be reconsidered. Moreover, studies of judicial choice must be attentive both to strategy & context. 6 Tables, 1 Appendix, 55 References. Adapted from the source document.