Appointment Politics and the Ideological Composition of the Judiciary

Scholars have advanced a wide range of theories regarding the role of Senate confirmation in judicial appointments. In this article, I directly test the predictions of these models using a novel measure of the ideology of judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. The main results indicate that the filibuster and majority party have predominated in appointment politics. Prompted by recent events, I also conduct a simulation‐based exercise to examine the ideological composition of the judiciary under a confirmation regime in which the filibuster is not present. This exercise suggests that the Senate filibuster induces moderation in judicial appointments; the elimination of the filibuster is likely to result in a more contentious, if less dilatory, confirmation process and a more polarized judiciary.     

A deadlier post-9/11 terrorism landscape for the USA abroad: a quasi-experimental study of backlash effects of terrorism prevention

Journal of Experimental Criminology - The United States initiated sweeping counterterrorism efforts after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This study tests a backlash hypothesis as it...     

Intergenerational Justice and Climate Change

Global climate change has important implications for the way in which benefits and burdens will be distributed amongst present and future generations. As a result it raises important questions of intergenerational justice. It is shown that there is at least one serious problem for those who wish to approach these questions by utilizing familiar principles of justice. This is that such theories often pre-suppose harm-based accounts of injustice which are incompatible with the fact that the very social policies which climatologists and scientists claim will reduce the risks of climate change will also predictably, if indirectly, determine which individuals will live in the future. One proposed solution to this problem is outlined grounded in terms of the notion of collective interests.