This article contains a selection of advice on how to improve the judicial selection system. The article explains that reconsideration of the judicial appointive systems must include both the broadly theoretical and the intensely practical. It should identify the key questions that must be addressed in creating a system of judicial appointment, elaborate and defend the principles that should gu...

This publication finds me at the half-way point of my tenure as president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. It is therefore timely to review our academy’s goals and progress, reflecting upon and inspecting our work together as a committed and talented group of management team members and volunteer leaders. To share highlights of the year-to-date, I have created a “virtual interview,” po...

The American judiciary, like other branches of government, has increasingly come under attack as both ideologically driven and polarized. At the same time, scholars have limited understanding of the extent to which politicization has shaped the courts or how its influence varies among tiers of the judiciary and across states. We present a simple theory of judicial politicization that models the...

The Voting Rights Act has radically altered the political status of minority voters and dramatically transformed the partisan structure of American politics. Given the political and racial salience of cases brought under the Act, it is surprising that the growing literature on the effects of a judge’s ideology and race on judicial decisionmaking has overlooked these cases. This Article provides...

Different theories have been developed, mainly in the context of the United States, to explain judicial decision-making. In this respect, there is an important ongoing debate over whether judges are guided by the law or by personal ideology. The analysis of the decision-making in the Polish Constitutional Tribunal seems to support the existence of some party alignment. It is to say that judicia...

Judicial independence is an idea that has both internal (or normative) and external (or institutional) aspects. From a normative viewpoint, judges should be autonomous moral agents, who can be relied on to carry out their public duties independent of venal or ideological considerations. Independence, or impartiality, in this sense is a desirable aspect of a judge’s character. But judges are hum...

This study examined laypeople’s evaluations of judicial decision making, specifically of the judicial decision-making process and the judiciary’s legitimacy. Seven-hundred participants were presented with three judicial decisions, which were portrayed as following on the heels of solid and appropriate legal procedure. Each decision was accompanied by one of four types of reasoning. Participants...