A Neo-Institutional Explanation of State Supreme Court Responses in Search and Seizure Cases*

To better understand the relationship between the U.S. Supreme Court and state supreme courts, we examine how Supreme Court precedent affects state supreme court decision making. Examining state supreme court decisions in search and seizure cases decided by the Supreme Court between 1983 and 1993, we specifically test hypotheses about how state judicial context and Supreme Court behavior influences when the lower court is likely to be affected by Supreme Court precedent. We find that there is substantial variation in the responses to precedent by state supreme courts. We find that precedent has a substantial influence on the behavior of state supreme court justices, but judicial ideology and the level of historical conflict between the Supreme Court and the state supreme court also influence the dissemination of precedent to the states. Most interesting, the effect of judicia

The implications of salary for the quality of nominations to the federal district courts, 1964–2012

Many have expressed concern over the working conditions of federal district court judges who face comparatively low salaries in contrast to those in peer professions. As a means of enticing new judges of the highest quality, Chief Justices Rehnquist and Roberts have urged Congress and the president to increase judicial pay. However, scholars have not conducted a systematic, empirical investigation of whether higher salaries do, in fact, attract better prospective judges. We turn our attention to this issue. We first develop an exhaustive dataset of ABA ratings for over 1,800 nominees to the federal district courts from 1964 to 2012. We next model the effects of salary on the quality of nominations and confirmations. We find that salary is an important determinant of both the quality of candidates nominated and those confirmed to the federal bench. Our findings have critical implications for public policy, as our results confirm the need for better pay for federal judges