Abstract
The legislature wields multiple tools to limit judicial power, but scholars have little information about how judges interpret variant threats and which they find most concerning. To provide insight, we conduct original interviews regarding legislative threats to courts with over two dozen sitting federal judges, representing all tiers of the federal judiciary. We find that judges have a nuanced understanding of threats and tend to identify components of legislative proposals that threaten formal institutional powers as more concerning than those challenging policy set by judges. This distinction has broad implications for our understanding of judicial behavior at the federal level.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Fall 2018
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1086/695743
Repository Citation
Mark, Alyx and Zilis, Michael A., "Blurring Institutional Boundaries: Judges' Perceptions of Threats to Judicial Independence" (2018). Political Science Faculty Publications. 3.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/polsci_facpub/3
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Journal of Law and Courts, v. 6, no. 2, p. 333-353.
© 2018 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.
The copyright holder has granted the permission for posting the article here.