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Justice for Sale? Campaign Contributions and Judicial Decisionmaking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Damon M. Cann
Damon M. Cann*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Abstract

As state judicial campaigns become progressively more expensive and political, judicial candidates have turned more frequently to lawyers and law firms for campaign contributions. Given that lawyers who contribute to judges' campaigns frequently appear before them in court, the potential for a conflict of interest arises. I ask whether judges are more likely to rule in favor of attorneys who provide financial support to their campaigns. Looking at cases decided in the Supreme Court of Georgia's 2003 term, I show that campaign contributions are indeed correlated with judges' decisions. Furthermore, I use a two-stage probit least squares estimator to show that these campaign contributions directly affect judicial decisionmaking.

Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Fall 2007 , pp. 281 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association, 2007

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