Federal Judges: The Appointing Process

More Women Named Federal Judges

Careerist judges and the appeals process

I analyze how careerist judges formulate their decisions using information they uncover during deliberations as well as relevant information from previous decisions. I assume that judges have reputation concerns and try to signal to an evaluator that they can interpret the law correctly. If an appeal is brought, the appellate court’s decision reveals whether the judge interpreted the law proper...

Perhaps We Should Pay Federal Circuit Judges More

Scott Baker’s article takes a creative approach to the question of whether the federal judiciary should receive a pay raise and concludes that the data counsel otherwise.1 While I am a great advocate of empirical analysis to inform questions such as this, and Professor Baker may have done the best job possible with the available measures, I fear that this study contributes little to the debate ...

Racial Disparities in the Allocation of Wiretap Applications across Federal Judges

The degree to which discrimination causes the large racial disparities in the criminal justice system is a long-standing and difficult empirical question. This paper studies a decision in which the influence of race on prosecutors is directly observed: the process of obtaining judicial approval to conduct wiretap surveillance. The Department of Justice requires that federal prosecutors obtain i...

Female Judges Matter: Gender and Collegial Decisionmaking in the Federal Appellate Courts