The politics of jurisprudence

What does the word "jurisprudence" mean? While the word comes from a prefix meaning "law" attached to a word meaning "knowledge," the second word has changed in meaning. Prudence may have once indicated sagacity, but it now also means cautious, or even careful. Maybe that is due to our judiciary traditionally being old lawyers, people with experience in studying and practicing law. Incidentally, my state has the oldest mandatory retirement age of 90. Some states never require retirement of a judge based on age.

Through novel analysis using data from the Martindale-Hubbell (a comprehensive directory of nearly a million lawyers, judges, and law professors) and from Bonica’s Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections (which scores all individuals and organizations making campaign contributions to state and federal candidates between 1979 and 2012), Sen and Bonica contend in a new working paper that they’re able to measure the politics of judges and attorneys, quantifying what had been known only anecdotally, if at all.

Click to expand...

What they found is that there is a correlation between conservative political ideology and likelihood of being appointed as a judge, and that this polarization increases the higher up you go in the judicial system. The authors sought to establish a causal link as well, and that political organizations are actively seeking to polarize the judiciary.

I do not think that being appointed a judge makes one conservative or liberal, and I agree with the findings that conservatives are more often appointed. An imperfect analogy would be the higher rate of arrest of minorities per capita. The pool of attorneys from which an appointment is made is largely liberal. So a greater number of conservatives appointed should indicate conservative actors are influencing the confirmation process.