A rampant supposition exists that the judicial nominations of females are less successful due to the nominee’s gender (Martinek 2002). It is thus paramount to further investigate empirically whether individual nominee characteristics, such as gender, inhibit the nominee’s possibility of obtaining Senate confirmation. I empirically explore this conjecture in two distinct ways. First, I employ a difference in means test to determine whether women are confirmed to the District Court at a lower rate, on average, than are men. Subsequently, I test the hypothesis using a logistic regression that examines the influence of gender and the interaction of gender and race on the likelihood of confirmation, while controlling for other factors. Aiming to contribute to previous scholarship by providing an updated empirical analysis, I offer an update to Wendy Martinek’s original analysis of judicial confirmations by using the Lower Federal Court Confirmation Database to examine whether the influences of gender, race and their interaction on confirmation dynamics vary by partisan control. Having found the effect that nonwhite women are less likely to be confirmed by a GOP Senate than white males, I examine whether gender and race are the key factors or whether the relationship may instead be driven by ideology. Despite popular belief, the analysis of the data is not supportive of an extensive gender gap and undermines the claim that gender alone is an imperative factor inhibiting women from obtaining a successful confirmation. However, the empirical results are supportive of the hypothesis that racial minority females are less likely to be confirmed by a GOP controlled Senate than their white female and male counterparts.

State supreme courts are autonomous institutions with significant power. Yet, despite this authority, state supreme courts routinely rely on one another to explain why and how they reached their decisions. This puzzle of why state supreme courts cite each other in their opinions led me to pose two questions. First, under what conditions do state supreme courts cite other states supreme courts? And second, to whom do they turn for guidance? To answer these questions, I propose a new theory for evaluating state supreme court citations, the social learning model. I borrow policy diffusion’s learning mechanism and I pair it with network theory and methods to explain peer-to-peer state supreme court citations practices. I argue that courts are social actors who interact, influence, and learn from one another, and the citations are communications by and between the courts. To model citations between courts, I apply a temporal exponential random graph network analysis model or TERGM. TERGMs simulate the evolution of the state-to-state citation network by including aspects of both the courts and the network structure. I argue that only by understanding how networks and issue areas evolve can we begin to understand how courts and justices make decisions. The network approach to citations specifically tests these endogenous relationships, it also directly models the complex dependencies of citation networks. My findings demonstrate the courts became more connected over time and no single state supreme court leader emerges. I find that citations are endogenous; what one court does affects other courts. I also discover that the area of law matters a lot and it is insufficient to pool all legal issues into a single model. Finally, state supreme courts do not cite state supreme courts who look like them. Overall, the evidence suggests the courts are learning from each other. The courts’ written language discloses the mechanism. Courts state their own case law does not provide a solution to the question presented and they must seek answers elsewhere. Additionally, the courts do not always cite the same state, as we would expect from emulation. Together, these findings demonstrate that state supreme courts are connected, they learn from one another.

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Despite well documented evidence that both the level and diversity of amicus participation in state high courts have been growing, we know little about whether or under what conditions amicus briefs have an impact on court outcomes. This dissertation investigates how interest groups attempt to influence state supreme courts through their participation as amicus curiae. Using an original dataset assembled from content analysis of more than 2300 state supreme court decisions handed down between 1995 and 2010 and spanning three distinct areas of law - products liability, environmental law, and free speech/expression - I find that amicus briefs submitted by interest groups have the most influence over judicial outcomes in areas of law where interest groups routinely make large-scale donations to judicial campaigns. These results raise serious concerns about the influence of big money in judicial elections. The second part of this dissertation tests two competing theories of amicus influence to determine how state high court judges utilize amicus brief information in judicial decision making. The informational theory assumes the influence of amicus brief information to be evenly distributed across judges. However, theories of confirmation bias and motivated reasoning suggest that the information in amicus briefs may be received and evaluated differently depending upon the ideological predispositions of individual judges. Using multi-level modeling, I analyze the votes of more than 12,000 individual state high court judges to determine whether judge ideology conditions the influence of amicus briefs such that judges are more receptive to pro-attitudinal information contained in briefs from interest groups that share their predispositions. Results suggest that method of judicial retention and area of case law structures the mechanism of amicus brief influence. Amicus briefs appear to play an informational role in complex areas of case law but the presence of competitive judicial elections appear to alter the mechanism of amicus brief influence such that judicial responsiveness to amicus briefs is more closely tied to the reelection and campaign fundraising considerations of individual judges. The final portion of this dissertation investigates the case-level and court-level factors that attract interest group participation as amicus curiae in state high courts in order to better our understanding of interest group strategies when engaging state judiciaries. This paper tests the hypothesis that groups strategically target cases that will best serve the policy and institutional interests of the group, while focusing group resources on cases and courts where they are most likely to be successful. Results indicate that both liberal and conservative groups target state high courts that are elected through competitive and retention election processes rather than those that are appointed, suggesting that interest groups believe their influence will be greater with judges who are accountable to the public. Results also show that both liberal and conservative groups target courts from states that are ideologically sympathetic, but not necessarily from courts that are ideologically similar. / Political Science

In pursuing their goals, newly-created constitutional courts of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics are affected by their institutional setting and capabilities. Yet, previous studies did not explore how constitutional courts develop over time and what noteworthy implications for politics and society result from their institutional growth. To address this gap in the literature, I measured a variety of organizational characteristics and constructed an index of institutional development for the twenty eight constitutional courts in the post-communist countries from the initial year of their transitions through 2005. I argued that high values on this measure (which I labeled the judicial viability score) should enable constitutional court judges to satisfy their policy objectives and improve public and elite perceptions of the judiciary’s role in new democratic systems. To demonstrate this empirically, I tested a series of statistical models of judicial influence to show that the level of court’s institutional viability has profound implications on its legal, political, and social impact. My analyses indicated that the level of the constitutional court’s institutional viability is, indeed, an important determinant of the constitutional court judges’ ability to actively shape public policies and render decisions which are independent of, and in opposition to, the preferences of dominant political actors and government institutions. Additionally, the results demonstrated that the level of constitutional court’s viability significantly affects the perceptions of the ordinary citizens and business elites—ordinary citizens and business owners and managers are more likely to express confidence in the national legal system in countries with relatively institutionalized constitutional courts than citizens living in countries with weakly institutionalized constitutional courts. Thus, my research highlights the importance of studying the evolutionary process by which courts acquire institutional viability and, in doing so, contributes to our understanding of the factors shaping the development of democracy, the rule of law, and constitutionalism in the post-communist societies.

A tese apresenta modelo de classificação de ações judiciais categorias e de ressignificação escalas da decisão judicial em categoria dicotômica (Liberal e Garantista), calcada em modelo teórico de definição da direção do resultado judicial institucional (decisão) e individual (voto) . Testa o modelo em face de decisões do STF no período de 1988 e 1989, em sede de controle de constitucionalidade (ADI). Apresenta as inferências extraíveis dos dados quantitativos, sob 03 perspectivas fidelidade, álibi e traição. / This research presents model and methodology for classifying judicial cases, according to categories, and its opinions, through scales, in two behavioral patterns (Liberal and Garantista), which summarize the decision and vote directions. The model is tested against a specific set of STFs judicial opinions from 1988 and 1989 (direct judicial review). Possible inferences are extracted from the quantitative results produced, using a threefold perspective, labeled as faithfulness, alibi and treason. Concludes that the model can be used by different analytic models, such as Legal, Attitudinal and Formal Theory.

What explains institutional instability in national judicial institutions? Much extant research focuses on de facto institutional instability, emphasizing political motivations behind irregular changes to high court composition. In contrast, I consider the causes for de jure chan- ges made to the Ecuadorian Supreme Court from 1979 to the present, drawing on qualitative and quantitative analyses. I contend that the judicialization of politics and presidential interest in stacking the courts are central explanatory factors, and that changes to the Supreme Court's institutional framework reflect implicit compromises and political arrangements negotiated by strategic political actors. As such, institutional reforms to national judicial instiuttions may beadopted to ameliorate conflict in the larger political sphere. / ¿Qué factores explican la inestabilidad institucional en las cortes supremas de justicia? Recurriendo a una investigación múltiple en la que destaca la elaboración de narrativas históricas y un modelo de regresión logístico, este artículo evidencia que el incremento de las disputas políticas trasladadas a la arena judicial -judicialización de la política- y el interés de los presidentes por obtener jueces afines a su proyecto político, constituyen buenos predictores de los cambios al diseño institucional que gobierna al Poder Judicial. Tomando como caso de estudio la Corte Suprema de Justicia del Ecuador, el artículo constata además que las variaciones institucionales tienen como objetivo redistribuir los espacios de poder al interior de dicho tribunal, reduciendode esa forma los altos niveles de conflictividad observados en la arena política.

A tese apresenta modelo de classificação de ações judiciais categorias e de ressignificação escalas da decisão judicial em categoria dicotômica (Liberal e Garantista), calcada em modelo teórico de definição da direção do resultado judicial institucional (decisão) e individual (voto) . Testa o modelo em face de decisões do STF no período de 1988 e 1989, em sede de controle de constitucionalidade (ADI). Apresenta as inferências extraíveis dos dados quantitativos, sob 03 perspectivas fidelidade, álibi e traição. / This research presents model and methodology for classifying judicial cases, according to categories, and its opinions, through scales, in two behavioral patterns (Liberal and Garantista), which summarize the decision and vote directions. The model is tested against a specific set of STFs judicial opinions from 1988 and 1989 (direct judicial review). Possible inferences are extracted from the quantitative results produced, using a threefold perspective, labeled as faithfulness, alibi and treason. Concludes that the model can be used by different analytic models, such as Legal, Attitudinal and Formal Theory.

The main argument of this study is that the right of Indigenous peoples in Peru to consultation has little practical force and effect, since the Peruvian Constitutional Tribunal is not prepared to base it on a broader right of self-determination. I centre my investigation on the 2005-2011 decisions of the Constitutional Tribunal of Peru regarding the right to consultation. In these decisions, the application of the right to consultation is divorced from a perspective informed by the right of Indigenous self-determination. The main consequence of this divorce is that it obscures the pragmatic and symbolic dimension of the right to Indigenous self-determination, debilitating the practical and symbolic potential of the right to consultation. The lack of correspondence between the right to consultation and the right of indigenous self-determination is built into the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Tribunal and reflects the bias of its judges. This bias is actually a continuation and accommodation of old prejudices of the dominant society against Indigenous peoples in Peru; it is part of the pervasive cultural discrimination that is embedded in Peruvian society and that has been translated into jurisprudential terms and language. This bias is also a symptom of the invisibility of the cultural manifestations of Indigenous peoples and the resultant obscuring of cultural differences in general. This situation illustrates that the racism that existed in the colony, and continued during the republican era in Peru, has not died, but has merely been transformed into a more subtle form of legal and constitutional colonialism. / Graduate / 0326 / alvaro.cordova@mail.mcgill.ca