Laura Langer

TL;DR: This article developed a contextually based, party-adjusted surrogate judge ideology measure (PAJID) and subject this measure to an extensive array of validity tests, and showed that PAJID offers a valid, stable measure of judge preferences in state supreme courts that is demonstrably superior to party affiliation in analyses of judicial decision-making.

TL;DR: This paper examined the influence of court ideology on the enactment of state abortion and death penalty laws since the 1970s and found that the likelihood of subsequent court intervention magnifies the relationship, with the most pronounced effect occurring where subsequent court review was mandatory.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore fundamental questions about the nature of inter-institutional conflict by examining all cases decided since Roe v Wade by state supreme courts in which direct challenges to state statutes regulating abortion services were raised.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors place state supreme courts in state politics by tracking some of the major lines of research on these important institutions, documenting the importance of state supreme court, and ill...

TL;DR: The authors examined career patterns of 257 associate state supreme court justices and the conditions under which some of these justices were elevated to chief justice and found that the recruitment of chief justice is used to advance judges' personal policy preferences in some instances, but in other states recruitment of this position was used to appease actors who can punish judges for objectionable decisions and further hypothesize that chief justice control over opinion assignment shapes the recruitment process and the probability any given justice will become chief justice.