The Politicization of State Judicial Elections: The Effects of New-Style Campaigns on State Court Legitimacy

州司法选举的政治化：新型运动对州法院合法性的影响

• 批准号: 0520065
• 负责人: James Gibson
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Washington University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-09-15 至 2009-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0520065&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Politicization; State; Judicial; Elections; Effects

In recent years, U.S. Supreme Court decisions allowing state judges to make policy statements during campaigns for judicial offices, together with the growing economic, political, and social importance of state judicial systems and the vast sums of money being invested in judicial campaigns, have led to substantial changes in elections for state supreme courts. Both legal pundits and social scientists predict that the consequence of this new style of judicial campaigning will be the loss of legitimacy for state legal systems and courts; as citizens come to see courts as not unique -- that is, as ordinary political institutions -- the impartiality of the courts will be questioned, undermining the basic legitimacy of these institutions. These new-style judicial campaigns thus provide a propitious context for further development of theories of judicial legitimacy in the laboratories of the American states. Specifically, this project will test the hypothesis that the politicized character of judicial campaigning influences perceptions of the legitimacy of law and courts. Using a three-wave panel survey of a representative sample of citizens in the state of Texas, the research will examine whether changes in attitudes toward law and courts are a function of exposure to politicized judicial campaign advertisements. The project takes advantage of the relatively new databases of actual campaign ads, which allow the researchers to know the nature of the advertising content to which voters are exposed. Beyond the project's contributions to research infrastructure and graduate student training, the project will make the data collected available to the scholarly community with very little embargo period. In addition, the project will yield much-needed empirical evidence on the consequences of electing judges in the contemporary political environment.

近年来，美国最高法院允许州法官在司法职位竞选期间发表政策声明，加上州司法系统在经济、政治和社会方面的重要性日益增加，以及司法竞选投入的巨额资金，导致州最高法院选举发生了重大变化。法律专家和社会科学家都预测，这种新型司法运动的后果将是国家法律体系和法院的合法性丧失；随着公民不再将法院视为独一无二的——也就是说，视为普通的政治机构——法院的公正性将受到质疑，从而削弱这些机构的基本合法性。因此，这些新型的司法运动为美国各州实验室中司法合法性理论的进一步发展提供了有利的环境。具体而言，该项目将检验司法运动的政治化特征影响法律和法院合法性观念的假设。通过对德克萨斯州具有代表性的公民样本进行三波小组调查，该研究将检验对法律和法院态度的变化是否与接触政治化的司法竞选广告有关。该项目利用了相对较新的实际竞选广告数据库，这使研究人员能够了解选民所接触的广告内容的性质。除了该项目对研究基础设施和研究生培训的贡献之外，该项目还将使收集到的数据在很短的封锁期内可供学术界使用。此外，该项目将提供急需的经验证据，说明在当代政治环境中选举法官的后果。