Court Diversification: Staffing the State
Courts of Last Resort Through Interim Appointments
Lisa M. Holmes
and Jolly A. Emrey
In this study, we
examine a governor’s ability to appoint interim replacement judges to courts
of last resort in states with elective judiciaries.
We find that 52 percent of all judges placed on the courts of last resort
in such states between 1964 and 2004 were appointed by the governor, with the
remaining 48 percent being elected to the bench.
This finding is notable in terms of the importance of interim
appointments to the staffing of the state bench and is in line with earlier
studies on interim appointments. We
also find that there is some difference in the race of appointed judges compared
to elected judges overall, and that interim appointments are more likely to
diversify an all-male or all-white court than are elections.
Finally, we conclude that Democratic governors are more likely than are
Republicans to put forward nonwhite judges as interim appointees, particularly
when to do so initiates diversification of a court.
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