Partisan Ideology and the Judiciary

With all the talk of “Radical Left Lunatics” and “Crooked Judges” in the federal judiciary, all of whom “should be IMPEACHED!!!,” [see  note ** at end], it’s worth taking a look at some interesting analyses by Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica of the relationship between “judicial ideology”** and the outcomes in the many cases challenging Trump Administration policies.

The bottom line:

Judges across ideological lines are ruling against Trump at strikingly similar rates (84% liberal, 86% centrist, 82% conservative).…

Judicial ideology doesn’t predict ruling outcomes [in these cases]. This isn’t commonly the case—ideology is typically a moderate to strong predictor of case outcomes, making this ideological consensus particularly noteworthy. The pattern diverges from what Maya Sen and I found during Trump’s first term, when judge ideology strongly predicted case outcomes. What changed? [emphasis added]

It’s an important point. A judge’s ideology is, usually, a “moderate to strong predictor” of case outcomes – but not here, not in the cases challenging Administration actions on constitutional or statutory grounds. [As noted before, there is a very useful compilation of these cases - now numbering around 155! - available here].

I’m sure that this fact will have no bearing whatsoever on the campaign by the folks calling the shots at the White House and on Capitol Hill in their attacks on the federal judiciary.

Bonica suggests that “what changed” between Trump’s first term and today is that “today’s cases pose more fundamental constitutional violations uniting judges across partisan divides,” and that strikes me as, broadly speaking, basically correct.  One might expect – or at least hope – that the judiciary as a whole, liberal and conservative, would close ranks when faced with a serious threat to its power, and that may indeed be what is happening.

** If you’re especially interested in the methodology by which “judicial ideology” is measured, there’s a good discussion of the metric that Bonica uses in an earlier paper of his, available here. He uses the “DIME” database (Database on Ideology, Money in Elections), which uses data on political contributions to construct ideology scores for several hundred thousand US lawyers. legal academics, and judges. I’m no expert, but Bonica and others have been working with this database for about 10 years and it seems to be broadly useful and predictive.

**The Truth Social posting by the President of the United States read in its entirety as follows:

“This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President – He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn’t WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING! I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY. I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

I know that we’ve all gotten used to the, um, tone that the President of the United States uses in his written communications with the nation, but it’s good to remind ourselves, from time to time, just how outrageous and debased it is. We can argue all day about the merits of Judge Boasberg’s ruling, and that’s fine; but he is not a “Radical Left Lunatic,” nor is he a “troublemaker and agitator,” nor is he “Crooked.” and that the President of the United States can assert otherwise and we all just roll our eyeballs is a sad commentary on where we’re at these days.

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