TY - JOUR
T1 - Legal Rasputins? Law Clerk Influence on Voting at the US Supreme Court
AU - Bonica, Adam
AU - Chilton, Adam
AU - Goldin, Jacob
AU - Rozema, Kyle
AU - Sen, Maya
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected].
PY - 2019/3/1
Y1 - 2019/3/1
N2 - Supreme Court justices employ law clerks to help them perform their duties. We study whether these clerks influence how justices vote in the cases they hear. We exploit the timing of the clerkship hiring process to link variation in clerk ideology to variation in judicial voting. To measure clerk ideology, we match clerks to the universe of disclosed political donations. We find that clerks exert modest influence on judicial voting overall, but substantial influence in cases that are high-profile, legally significant, or close decisions. We interpret these results to suggest that clerk influence occurs through persuasion rather than delegation of decision-making authority.
AB - Supreme Court justices employ law clerks to help them perform their duties. We study whether these clerks influence how justices vote in the cases they hear. We exploit the timing of the clerkship hiring process to link variation in clerk ideology to variation in judicial voting. To measure clerk ideology, we match clerks to the universe of disclosed political donations. We find that clerks exert modest influence on judicial voting overall, but substantial influence in cases that are high-profile, legally significant, or close decisions. We interpret these results to suggest that clerk influence occurs through persuasion rather than delegation of decision-making authority.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85062554424&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1093/jleo/ewy024
DO - 10.1093/jleo/ewy024
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85062554424
SN - 8756-6222
VL - 35
SP - 1
EP - 36
JO - Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization
JF - Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization
IS - 1
ER -