ABSTRACT
We are regularly warned that judicial elections put the legitimacy of state courts in peril. Judicial reform groups claim that exposure to vigorous campaigns will subtract from citizens’ support for these institutions and “threaten … the promise of equal justice for all” (Greytak et al. 2015, 1).1 For example, the Defense Research Institute warned in 2008 that “no one can dispute that the rise of attack advertising of judicial elections and the growth of special interest spending from all sides of the political spectrum is threatening to seriously erode the public’s confidence in the judiciary” (Trimble 2008). Legal analyst and Brennan Center fellow Andrew Cohen warned in 2013 that “the very existence of [judicial elections] undermine[s] confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary.” U.S. Supreme Court justices have joined the chorus, with Sandra Day O’Connor regularly speaking out about judicial elections (Liptak 2010), and Sonia Sotomayor writing that partisan elections have “cast … a cloud of illegitimacy over the criminal justice system” in Alabama (Woodward v. Alabama). The claim is simple: judicial elections pose a grave threat to the legitimacy of state courts.2
