Public Opinion and Federal Judicial Policy

• NCJ Number: 79129
• Journal: American Journal of Political Science Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Dated: (August 1977) Pages: 567-600
• Author(s): B B Cook
• Date Published: 1977
• Length: 34 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Ford Foundation; University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The representative model typically used to study legislative behavior is used to examine the relationship between public opinion on the Vietnam War and the sentences of Federal district judges from 1967 to 1975.

Abstract

Under the representative model in a noncoercive situation, public officials act in harmony with public preferences from two motivations: as an affective response based on common socialization and participation experiences and as a cognitive reaction to influences defined as legitimate by their role conceptions. The noncoercive linkage between the judges and their constituencies, which explains the congruence of public preference and policy, is the political recruitment of judicial authorities from the locality they serve. The dependent variable in the model is sentencing, viewed as a public policy choice. Where a sentencing pattern for an offense is irregular over time, judges may be reconsidering the meaning of that offense in relation to the changing social and political demands of their environment. The instability of sentencing policy on draft crimes suggests that judges revise their sentencing in accord with public opinion or other forces external to the criminal justice subsystem. The measure used for the sentence is the probation index -- the deviation of probation percentage for draft offenders from the probation percentage for all offenders during the fiscal year. The independent variables are public opinion polls, elite opinion (congressional policy on the war and Department of Justice policy in prosecuting cases,) and community opinion (jury decisions). Independent and dependent variables were aggregated on the national, regional, and district levels. Over the 9-year study period, findings suggest that exogenous variables, particularly public opinion, contribute to an understanding of changing judicial behavior. Other models for conducting a similar study are described. Tabular data and 74 references are provided.