Doctoral Dissertation Research: Three Essays on Judicial Decision-Making

本研究考察了选举刑事审判法官对他们在量刑过程中保护少数群体权利的能力的影响。这项研究利用了堪萨斯州的行政数据，其中包括1998年至2010年被定罪的重罪犯。堪萨斯州是仅有的三个同时采用选举（14个地区）和任命（17个地区）来选择法官的州之一。这种变化将允许pi区分司法任命模式，控制特定州的因素。本研究还调查了司法偏见在多大程度上可以随着时间的推移而习得或消除。有了更多的专业经验，法官们似乎可以通过与黑人和白人辩护人的反复互动，了解到真正的种族特定的累犯率，从而更新他们先前的信念。一种“边做边学”的模式反映了当下有关量刑指南优劣的政策辩论。自20世纪80年代以来，联邦政府和许多州制定了量刑指南，以便在量刑过程中提供更多的结构，这在理论上通过限制司法自由裁量权来限制种族量刑差异。在实践中，关于其有效性的证据好坏参半，这引起了人们的担忧，即阻止法官利用其专业知识是没有根据的。如果法官在他们的职业生涯中更早而不是更晚地从事基于种族的量刑，那么这将表明将指导方针与任期挂钩可能是更有效的实施这一政策的方法。

This research examines the impact of electing criminal trial judges on their ability to protect minority rights in the sentencing process. The study utilizes administrative data from Kansas that includes the universe of convicted felons from 1998 to 2010. Kansas is one of only three states that uses both elections (in 14 districts) and appointment (in 17 districts) to choose judges. This variation will allow the PIs to distinguish between judicial appointment modes, controlling for state-specific factors. This research also investigates the extent to which judicial prejudice can be learned or unlearned over time. With more professional experience, it seems plausible that judges could update their prior beliefs as they learn about true race-specific recidivism rates through repeated interactions with both black and white defenders.A "learning-by-doing" model speaks to the concurrent policy debate over the merits of sentencing guidelines. Since the 1980's, the federal government and numerous states have enacted sentencing guidelines in order to provide more structure in the sentencing process, which in theory, limits racial sentencing disparities by constraining judicial discretion. In practice, there has been mixed evidence on their effectiveness, which raises concerns that preventing judges from utilizing their expertise is unwarranted. If judges do engage in more race-based sentencing earlier rather than later in their careers, then this would suggest tying the guidelines to tenure might be a more effective implementation of this policy.