Independence-of-US-Supreme-Court-Justices
Background
I investigate the causal effect of the U.S. Supreme Court (SC) judges’ party affiliation on their perceived ideology to determine the independence of their decision-making from political bias. This is important for challenging the long-held perception that the judiciary acts independently of their preferences or bias and in line with established legal principles. I describe the characteristics used in estimating the model for ideology and what this implies about the make-up of the U.S. SC using visualisations.
I also conduct a regression analysis for judicial ideology. The results show that the party affiliation of a judge prior to their nomination does in fact explain their perceived ideology. While there are arguments for the causal connections of the model, there are limitations to the model and ideology may not be a good proxy for the actual decision-making processes of judges in U.S. SC cases. Many scholars have argued about the circular nature of some of these measures and the limitation of using third-party sources for determining political preferences.