In representative democracies, a variety of rules are employed to select and retain public
officials to reflect public preferences over policies. We discuss the literature on selection and …

Local exposure to conservative news causes judges to impose harsher criminal sentences.
Our evidence comes from an instrumental variable analysis, where randomness in television …

Do judges respond to reversals of their decisions? Using random assignment of cases
across two stages of the criminal justice system in Norway and a novel dataset linking trial …

How does racial diversity impact institutional outcomes and (in) equality? Discussions about
diversity usually focus on how individuals' identities shape their behavior, but diversity is a …

We add to our understanding of the optimal method of judicial selection by exploiting an
unusual feature in North Carolina: judges rotate location every 6 months. This allows us to …

The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other nation.
Mass Incarceration Nation offers a novel, in-the-trenches perspective to explain the factors …

Judicial experience is considered essential for the proper functioning of the sentencing
system. We investigate how it influences judicial decisions and its role in reducing …

Who imposes a sentence upon conviction? Traditional narratives place sentencing
responsibility with the trial judge.'For example, Judge Hardiman explains," Of the many …

Research on electoral sentencing cycles consistently shows that elected judges levy longer
sentences when they are up for re-election. However, this research draws on data from a …

Judges receive limited information on how their sentencing practices contribute to inter-
judge sentencing disparities which can undermine equity and the perceptions of legitimacy …