ABSTRACT
In recent election cycles, increased attention to judicial elections has focused on the high cost of races for state supreme courts. The high levels of campaign contributions in these elections have increased concerns about the independence and impartiality of the courts (e.g., Skaggs et al. 2011; Greytak et al. 2015). Commission selection and judicial retention elections have long been advocated as mechanisms to achieve and maintain judicial independence and impartiality.1 Commission selection eliminates campaigns from the initial selection stage, and justices campaign in retention elections only when they are actively opposed. However, some of the most costly judicial elections in the last three election cycles have been retention elections for state supreme court justices (e.g., Illinois in 2010 and 2014, Florida in 2012, and Tennessee in 2014). Thus, in this chapter I address three questions: (1) Have judicial retentions changed of late? (2) Are supreme court retention elections representative of all judicial retention elections? (3) Do the recent high-cost supreme court retention elections foreshadow the future?
