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Causal Mechanisms in the Exchange of Votes for Money in State Supreme Court Elections

Bennet Min &

Banks Miller

Political Science Program School of Economic Political and Policy Science

University of Texas at Dallas

Abstract: Political scientists studying the prejudicial effects of campaign contributions on judicial voting behavior have yet to investigate causal mechanisms for the behavior they observe; the reason for causality is assumed as obvious, requiring no explanation. We use a simple game-theoretic model to challenge this assumption, and develop a model of when and why judges might exchange votes for money. Prior studies treat judges as retrospective actors; judges vote for donors to reward them for their donations to past campaigns. We argue that judges are prospective actors, and their voting behavior is dependent on the funding needs of reelection bids: the more money judges need to run, the more they vote for donors. Judicial bias is thus a strategic behavior. By modeling judges as office-seeking rational actors, we attempt to account for both interstate and between-judge variations in judicial voting behavior. We test our model using the voting records of elected judges from five state supreme courts and find some limited empirical support for our hypotheses that judges employ biased voting for donors as a strategic behavior.

Prepared for Presentation at the Southern Political Science Association Conference, New Orleans, January 2011.

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The judicial reform debate today targeting judicial elections is itself a product of past

judicial reform. As formerly appointed bodies, political parties had staffed courts through

patronage. Reformers argued judges who depended on partisanship for office were unable to

make fair and impartial decisions, and sought to remove judgeships from party control by

electing judges (Hall 1984). But the belief that elections liberated judges from party control has

since been replaced by the suspicion that elected judges are now prejudiced by campaign

contributions (Gibson 2009). Though scholars have begun the process of studying whether

judges exchange votes for campaign contributions (Bonneau and Cann Nd; Cann 2007; Cann

200; Ditslear and Williams 2007; McCall 2003; McCall 2001; Waltenberg and Lopeman 2000),

none have yet explored the causal mechanisms that would underlie such a relationship. Here, by

modeling judges as prospective office-seeking policymakers, we provide the conditions that

affect the probability that judges will exchange votes for campaign contributions. We test our

model using the voting records of 31 elected judges from five state supreme courts.

Background

As candidates spend more money running for state supreme courts, the controversy over

money in judicial elections continues to grow (Cheek and Champagne 2000). But as in any

controversy, there are two sides to the debate, and some scholars defend campaign spending in

judicial elections using empirical evidence. Bonneau (2007) and Hall and Bonneau (2008)

challenge the negative perception of campaign spending in judicial elections, finding that

campaign spending increases the democratic accountability of judges. Increasing campaign

spending increases voter participation in judicial elections (Hall and Bonneau 2008).

Furthermore, increasing campaign spending by challengers decreases incumbent voter shares,

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while incumbents are unable to increase their vote shares by increasing spending. As not all

incumbents deserve to be reelected, “narrow electoral margins for incumbents and outright

defeats” are the expectations of optimal democratic processes (Bonneau and Hall 2009, 124).

Notwithstanding its positive effects on voter participation and vote shares, the campaign

finance reform debate focuses on the effects of campaign contributions after elections: There is a

general perception that elected officials trade favors for campaign contributions (House and

Stratmann 2008, 215). The same perception exists for judicial elections. Gibson (2009), studying

popular perceptions of judicial elections, finds that judges deciding cases involving campaign

contributors has “at least the appearance of self-interested partiality and procedural unfairness”

(Gibson 2009, 60). Public suspicions of campaign contributions and judicial bias find some

support in the literature. Studies by political scientists and lawyers have analyzed the connection

between attorney donations and judicial decisions in Alabama (Ware 1999; Waltenberg and

Lopeman 2000), Wisconsin (Cann 2002; Ditslear and Williams 2007), Georgia (Cann 2007),

Texas (McCall 2003; 2001; Bonneau and Cann n.d.), Michigan (Bonneau and Cann Nd), Ohio

(Waltenberg and Lopeman 2000), Nevada (Bonneau and Cann Nd) and Kentucky (Waltenberg

and Lopeman 2000). What is notable is the diversity of conclusions coming from this research:

the influence of money depends heavily on the institutional context in which the money is given.

In states like Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Alabama, Ohio, and Kentucky, there is evidence of

donations influencing judges; yet no evidence for the influence of contributions has appeared in

Wisconsin or Nevada. Political scientists have struggled to explain these interstate variations.

Further, scholars have not yet attempted close examinations of between-judge variations within

states.

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The methodological adage that correlation is not causation illustrates the conceptual

problem involved in findings of judges voting in favor of donors—is it really bias? Discerning

bias in judicial voting behavior raises an endogeneity problem. Bias requires that judges make

votes for litigants that they would not have otherwise made but for their campaign contributions.

Researchers may be observing sincere judicial voting behavior rather than bias—that is, judges

are not giving special consideration to donors when making decisions. If lawyers make

contributions to the campaigns of judges whose normal voting behavior favors their interests—

conservative lawyers donate to conservative judges, and liberal lawyers donate to liberal

judges—then conclusions of bias cannot be drawn from observations of judges voting for

contributors; rather than donations driving decisions, expected decisions drive donations

(Bronars and Lott 1997; Bonneau and Cann Nd).

Cann (2007) and Bonneau and Cann (Nd) employ instrumental variable regression

models to control for endogeneity and establish causality, arguing that prior studies employing

logit and probit are unable to demonstrate causality. Cann (2007) finds a causal relationship in

Georgia between campaign contributions and judicial voting behavior, with the rate of votes for

contributors increasing with the amount of contributions; $2,000 effectively secures a vote (Cann

2007). Bonneau and Cann (Nd), while finding causality in Texas and Michigan, do not find a

correlation between campaign contributions and judicial voting behavior in Nevada.

Nevada (Bonneau and Cann Nd) and Wisconsin (Cann 2002) challenge the quid pro quo

notion of campaign contributions and judicial bias. Why do campaign contributions cause

judicial bias in some states but not in others? Bonneau and Cann (Nd) posit that the Nevada

Supreme Court’s practice of deciding cases in panels, rather than en banc, may explain their

observations. Panels make it difficult for lawyers to make donations to the judges that will decide

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their cases and there is little evidence that lawyers hedge their bets by donating to all judges. Or

it may simply be that deciding cases in three-judge panels produces fewer observations in

Nevada than were available in Michigan and Texas (Bonneau and Cann Nd, 14). Studies using

larger samples may still find correlation in Nevada.

Cann (2007) also examines institutional variations to explain the disparity between

Georgia and Wisconsin. Judges on the Wisconsin Supreme Court serve ten-year terms, while

judges on the Georgia Supreme Court serve six-year terms. The longer terms in Wisconsin may

sufficiently insulate judges from elections and donors that they are able to exercise greater

independence than judges in Georgia. But studies addressing judicial decision making must

consider both macrolevel and microlevel variables (Brace and Hall 1995, 8). Institutional

practices may thus explain interstate, but not between-judge, variations in judicial voting

behavior.

The authors’ approach (Cann 2007; Bonneau and Cann Nd) denotes their assumptions in

investigating judicial bias: Finding correlation between contributions and judicial bias, they try

only to establish causality to substantiate their a prior beliefs in quid pro quo. Their findings do

not explain why such an exchange would occur or the conditions that would affect the

probability of such an exchange, only that an exchange occurs sometimes. Explanations are

provided only when they find no correlation, and only for why they do not find correlation. The

authors establish causal relationships without exploring causal mechanisms because the reason

for such a relationship seems obvious. But quid pro quo is not as simple as it is assumed.

Simple Model of Vote Exchanges

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The logic of buying judges is difficult to resolve with the judicial behavior literature.

Judges, as political actors, have policy preferences that they pursue; they “act to achieve

outcomes most proximate to their individual policy preferences” (Brace and Hall 1995, 11).

Further judges have only a finite number of opportunities to pursue their policy preferences

given that they hear a finite number of cases. Judges thus incur a substantial cost in selling votes

for campaign contributions.

A simple game-theoretic model may demonstrate the conceptual problem in assuming

quid pro quo, and define the conditions under which we may observe an exchange of votes for

donations. Constructing the judge-donor interaction as a game forms the judicial election

equivalent of a Prisoner’s Dilemma. The judge and donor engage in a non-cooperative game,

without a third party to enforce quid pro quo; any cooperation must be self-enforcing, wherein

cooperation is individually rational for both.

[Insert Figure 1 here]

If vd > c > vj, then both the judge and donor are better off cooperating with each other

than when neither cooperates at all. But, without an external enforcement mechanism, if they

have an incentive to defect, then they will defect. Cooperation is a costly endeavor for both the

donor and judge; while the donor pays the financial cost of making a campaign contribution, c,

the judge incurs the cost of losing an opportunity to pursue her policy preferences, vj. There is

thus always an incentive not to cooperate, in order to avoid paying the costs of cooperation.

From the donor’s perspective, if he makes a campaign contribution—say, a lawyer with a case in

the judge’s docket who, in the hopes of currying favor with the judge, makes a donation to her

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campaign—then the judge can maximize her payoff by taking his money but voting as she would

have otherwise; she get his donations without giving up a costly opportunity to pursue her policy

preferences. Recognizing it as a sucker bet, the donor is thus deterred from making a donation in

the first place. But the judge makes a similar calculation. If the judge is soliciting donations from

a deep-pocketed lawyer, and votes for his client against her preferences, then the lawyer can save

his money, since he has already won his case. In the end, both judge and donor settle on doing

nothing for the other, and the game predicts no cooperation. Whether or not the other holds up

their respective ends of their under-the-table deal, both players maximize their payoffs by not

cooperating; either they take advantage of the other, or they do not put themselves in a position

to be taken advantage of. There should be no correlation between campaign contributions and

judicial voting behavior; Nevada and Wisconsin thus need no further explanation. The real

puzzle is explaining causality.

The game’s prediction is at odds with the empirical evidence, for the most part—Cann

(2007) and Bonneau and Cann (Nd) reasonably establish causality where they find correlation.

The incongruity is resolved by employing a folk theorem: Indefinitely repeating the game

produces a cooperation, when players cooperate only so long as the other does too; one player’s

defection to cheat the other results in the other’s defection for the remainder of the repeated

game. If either cheats the other by defecting and getting something for nothing, the other

punishes the cheater by never giving anything again. A player can thus obtain through defection

in one period a higher payoff than the average payoff per period of cooperation. But, by ending

all future cooperation, she will receive no more from the other, and the total payoff for defection

is less than that of cooperation. Cooperation is thus in the self-interest of both players. The judge

and donor are able to give the other an incentive to exchange money for votes: By threatening to

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end all cooperation if the other cheats them, making the acceptance of the costs of cooperation a

necessary condition for receiving the benefits of cooperation, the judge and donor are able to

make cooperation in the other’s self-interest. If the deep-pocketed lawyer doesn’t make further

donations to a judge’s campaign after she votes in his client’s favor, he can expect no future

favors from the judge. On the other hand, if a judge accepts a lawyer’s donation but gives him no

special consideration, then the lawyer won’t make any future donations.

Judges do not act on preferences alone, and must balance their preferences with what

they perceive as feasible (Gibson 1983, 9). They depart from their most preferred policies when

they can maximize the utility of their votes by pursuing a less preferred, but more feasible,

outcome (Epstein & Knight 1998); if they will fail in their pursuit of their most preferred

policies, they will fail to pursue them entirely and take what they can get. Judges also depart

from their preferences when sacrificing immediate policymaking opportunities improves their

long-term ability to pursue their preferences (Epstein, Knight, and Shvetsova 2001). No

policymaker can make policy without their office; no matter how highly they value their policy

preferences, they must value their office even higher (Bueno de Mesquita et al 2003). As elected

officials, judges must be cognizant of elections. At the same time, they must consider their

ability to finance election campaigns; retaining their seat may depend on the amount of money

they spend (Hall and Bonneau 2008). And thus we are able to find a causal mechanism to explain

why judges exchange votes for campaign contributions: By sacrificing their immediate interests

in policymaking to vote for their donors’ interests, and maintaining their continued financial

support, judges secure financing for reelection bids and their long-term ability to make policy.

Modeling judges as prospective actors departs from prior studies that hold that judges

behave retrospectively, whereby the causality between votes and campaign contributions is then

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understood as judges rewarding donors; interstate variations are thus attributed to state-level

variables that produce differences in either the opportunities for judges to reward their own

donors (Bonneau and Cann Nd, 15) or their willingness to do so (Cann 2007, 291). But the

retrospective model cannot resolve the incongruity between the empirical evidence and the

Prisoner’s Dilemma.

In addition to resolving the empirical and game-theoretic incongruity, the prospective

model is more consistent with the literature, building on prior studies by incorporating both state-

and judge-level variables that may account for both interstate and intrastate variations—judges

vote for donors depending on their individual fundraising needs. Different politicians seeking

reelection maximize the utility of their limited resources differently (Epstein and Zemsky 1995).

While reelection is a universal end sought by office-seeking policymakers, its constraint is not

uniform; the optimal distribution of resources between reelection and policymaking is dependent

upon electoral prospects. Judges with better holds on their seats are better able to pursue their

policy preferences (Segal and Spaeth 2002). But as their prospects for remaining on the bench

become less certain, judges are constrained in their ability to do as they prefer; judges must then

increasingly be strategic in their actions. (Tabarrock and Helland 1999, 159; Huber and Gordon

2004, 249). As the model constructs judicial bias favoring donors as a strategic behavior

intended to improve judges’ electoral prospects, differences in electoral security for incumbent

judges due to endogenous (e.g. spatial distance between judge and electorate ideology) and

exogenous factors (e.g. judicial election type) may thus account for intrastate and interstate

variations in judicial voting behavior.

Data & Hypotheses

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We analyze the votes of judges in cases from the state supreme courts of Georgia, Ohio,

Mississippi, Texas, and West Virginia for their 2005 terms.1 Judges’ fundraising constraints (and

thus their voting behavior) are determined by four types of variables in our model: variables

which capture the electoral environment within a state and for a particular judge, variables which

capture the percentage of the total amount of campaign funds raised by a judge that is given by

attorneys, the potential replacability of attorney donations and the years remaining to the next

election. Our dependent variable in all of the following models is the percentage of time that a

judge votes for the parties represented by attorneys who gave money to the judge in her most

recent previous election.2

Electoral Environment

H1 : The smaller the electoral margin that judges win by in their previous elections, the higher the rates that they vote for their donors. As a strategic behavior, judges will vote for donors at higher rates when their seat on the

bench is less secure. A narrow margin of victory in a recent election signals a judge’s

vulnerability, and vulnerable judges may be more likely to face accomplished challengers in the

next election, as quality challengers are more willing to run when they believe they have a shot at

winning (Hall and Bonneau 2006). Incumbents try to dissuade challengers from entering by

signaling their support through fundraising; the more money an incumbent raises, the greater

support he can be presumed to have, and others may reconsider their probability of unseating the

1 Our data include all of the judges serving on the Georgia, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas Supreme Courts in the 2005 term and three of the judges serving on the West Virginia Supreme Court during 2005. We did not count elections before 2000 because of data reliability and availability problems, forcing us to exclude two West Virginia Supreme Court Justices whose most recent previous election occurred before 2000. A list of the judges included in our study, as well as some descriptive statistics, appear in the appendix. 2 Here we did not use observations in which a donor appeared as a representative for parties on both sides of the case. Donors appeared on both sides of case in approximately 21% of the cases in which any donor was present. In all there were 1275 votes in which a donor attorney appeared before a judge on at least one side of the case, with 216 cases having donors representing both the plaintiff and the respondent. These cases are distributed more or less evenly across the states in our sample. We identified donations using the National Money in State Politics database.

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incumbent and decide not to challenge her (Epstein and Zemsky 1995). As elected officials

cognizant of their electoral prospects, judges who narrowly won their most recent elections will

engage in strategic behavior aimed at securing campaign funding more than judges who won by

a comfortable margin. To measure this we simply use the percentage of votes won by the judge

in their most recent election.

H2: The more competitive a state is electorally, the more likely a judge is to feel constrained to favor donors at a high rate. Electoral competition for judicial elections is heavily influenced by the type of selection

system in use within a state (Hall 2001). Of the three varieties of selection and retention systems

in use in states that elect their judges, states using partisan elections are the most competitive. As

have others before us, we count Ohio as being a partisan system, although it is a hybrid of

partisan and non-partisan systems (see, e.g., Bonneau and Cann Nd). To measure the overall

competitiveness of the electoral environment we also utilize the Ranney Index (Ranney 1965),

which measures the level of partisan competition for office within a state. Our measure of the

political competitiveness within a state is a principal component factor score for the partisan and

Ranney Index variables, with higher values equating to greater potential competition. We expect

that more competitive states will also encourage judges to vote for donors at higher rates.

Attorney Donations

H3: As the percentage of attorneys’ donations increases, relative to the total amount raised, a judge will be more favorable towards attorney donors. Lawyers constitute a primary source of campaign contributions for many judges (see,

e.g., Cann 2007). The more money that judges need from lawyers, the less she can afford to lose

their financial support. But judges who have other reliable sources of campaign contributions can

afford to lose some future contributions from lawyers, replacing their lost contributions with

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contributions from other industries. Judges’ dependence on lawyers for campaign contributions

thus affects the probability that they will vote for donor lawyers in litigation; judges who heavily

rely on lawyers will vote more often for donor lawyers than judges who have other sources of

campaign contributions available. Our measure of the percentage of total donations comprised of

donations from attorneys is simply the ratio of the amount of money given by attorneys to a

judge divided by the total amount of money raised by that judge. The higher this ratio is—that is

the more a judge relies on attorneys for campaign donations—the more constrained a judge

should feel to vote for attorney donors.

Repalaceability of Attorney Donations

H4: The more replaceable an attorney’s donation the less constrained a judge will be in voting for attorney donors.

As the availability of campaign funds from attorney donors becomes more difficult to

replace, the fear of losing a potential donor should increase. The difficulty comes in capturing

the potential availability of replacement donations should a donor defect. To measure

replaceability we use a factor analysis approach to find the common structure among two

variables: the average income of attorneys in a state and the average number of lawyers within a

state. Our reasoning is that attorneys with higher incomes will be more likely to donate to

political campaigns and that the more attorneys there are within a state the more potential donors

there are available to replace defecting donors. The first of the two variables is from 2005, while

the second is taken from the 2000 Census. Using a principal component approach, we retained

the single factor with an eignevalue over 1 (Weller and Romney 1990). Since higher values of

this variable reflect higher numbers of attorneys with higher incomes in states, we expect that

higher values on this variable will lead to less loyalty to attorney donors.

Years to Next Election

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H5: The further a judge is from the next election the less likely she will be to favor donors.

As strategic actors, judges may reason that a favorable vote close to an upcoming election

is more valuable than a favorable vote further from an election. Similarly, it may be that attorney

donors have short memories and are more likely to remember recent votes than they are distant

votes when asked to contribute to a judge’s upcoming campaign. Therefore, we expect that the

further a judge is from his next election the less likely he will be to favor a donor appearing

before him.

We also include a variable that measures the average ideological distance between the

position taken by attorney donors and judges. We measure the positions taken by attorneys on

behalf of clients dichotomously as either liberal or conservative. Then, using a rescaled version

of the PAJID measure of judicial ideology (Brace et al. 2001), we calculate the mean distance

between judges and their attorney donors in cases. The expectations here are clear given the

emphasis in the literature on the effect of ideology in judicial decision making: the further donors

are on average from judges ideologically the less likely a judge should be to vote for a donor.

Analysis We begin our analysis with a simple regression using all 31 judges with usable data. The

results are presented as Model 1 in Table 1 below. All errors are robust to heteroscedasticity.

[Insert Table 1 here]

Of the hypotheses discussed above, only one holds under empirical scrutiny. It is clear that

judges are much more likely to reward previous campaign contributors with favorable votes as

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the next election approaches. This finding, based on the years to next election variable, is

substantively large and statistically significant. Every year from an election decreases the

percentage of donor-favorable votes by 2.7 percentage points. Increasing the number of years to

the next election from 1 to 7 decreases the percentage of the time that a judge votes for a donor

from 76% to 60%. This suggests, therefore, that hypothesis 5 is correct.

There are other substantively large and statistically significant relationships, but they do

not operate in the hypothesized directions. Most importantly, a more competitive state electoral

environment leads to less donor loyalty, not more. Moving from the least competitive state in

our data (Georgia) to the most competitive (Ohio) decreases the percentage of the time that

judges vote for donors by 19 percentage points. Our expectation was that more electoral

competition would lead to greater loyalty, but perhaps in states with high levels of partisan

competition there is also an abundance of willing contributors. We explore the logic of this

conclusion more below.

Another unexpected result is the negative effect of the percentage of donations from

attorneys variable, though it fails to reach traditional levels of statistical significance. Our

expectation was that this variable would be positively correlated with voting for donors but the

data indicate that increasing the percentage of donations received from attorneys, and thus

presumed reliance on their contributions for reelection, does not increase the percentage of the

time that judges will tend to vote for attorney donors.

Finally, and consistent with expectations and the judicial behavior literature, the average

ideological distance between a judge’s ideology and the position taken by donors is negatively

correlated with voting in favor of donors. This variable has a large substantive effect: a shift

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from the 25th to the 75th percentile in the data decreases the percentage of time that a judge votes

for donors by 16 percentage points.

However, it is possible that our results are not robust to the inherent endogeneity in this

type of data: it may be that donors contribute to judges that are ideologically similar to

themselves. Therefore, as a check on our results, we have re-estimated Model 1 as an

instrumental variable regression (presented as Model 2) in Table 1. All of the variables are the

same as those in Model 1 except that we have added an instrumental variable which we simply

call instrument. The instrument variable is a principal component factor analysis of the

following judicial characteristics: incumbency and whether a judge faced a challenger in either

the primary or general election in a state. Both incumbency and the presence of a challenger are

correlated with how much money a judge raises (Bonneau 2007, 492), but should not necessarily

have any correlation with voting for donors.

The results of the model can be summarized easily: the percentage from attorneys

variable becomes positively correlated with voting for attorney donors, although it does not

approach statistical significance. All of the other variables remain more or less unchanged in

their effects. This suggests some endogeneity between giving and ideology that, when properly

accounted for, alters the relationship between attorney donations and ideological voting in the

expected direction (i.e. the coefficient for this variable is now positive).

As a further check on the robustness of our results we estimated models using the total

amount of money raised from attorneys as opposed to the percentage of money raised from

attorneys. The substitution of the total amount raised for the percentage raised from attorneys

makes no difference in either of the models presented. Similarly, we substituted the total amount

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raised overall, not just from attorneys, for the percentage from attorneys variable and again there

is no difference in the outcomes we observe for either of the two models.

Discussion We believe that our results point the way to further exploration of the nature of the

exchange of donations for votes. First, it is clear that ideology continues to be a dominant factor

in the decision making of state supreme court judges—the ideological distance variable is

consistently signed in the expected direction and is statistically significant even when accounting

for potential endogeneity. Second, the more competitive the electoral environment is within a

state the less likely a judge is to favor donors. This is not what we expected and may be

explained by the either the wide availability of replacement donations in highly competitive

states, or by the fear among incumbents of strong challengers willing to point to the appearance

of favoritism as a campaign issue. Finally, it may be as simple as noting that greater electoral

competition reduces the likelihood of bias, something proponents of competitive judicial

elections will no doubt believe (see, e.g., Hall 2001). Of course, we can only speculate until we

have gathered more data.

More interestingly from the standpoint of our model it appears that the time until the next

election has a dramatic effect on the likelihood of a judge voting in favor of attorney donors,

something that holds true in the presence of ideology as a control. This is potentially important

because it points out what we believe to be a key facet of the simple game we outlined above:

that it must be iterated in order to explain an exchange of votes for donations—a one-off

encounter does not lead to an exchange of votes for donations. Indeed, the relative unimportance

of the remaining variables might point to the basic logic of the game: there appears to be very

little that is systematic about the relationship between votes and donations and the oddity is

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explaining instances in which there appears to be such a relationship, not when there is no such

relationship. To put it differently, we believe that it will be important to view judges as acting

prospectively instead of retrospectively. Our model suggests that within this prospective

framework, when elections are distant and there will be additional chances to reward a donor in

the future and closer to an election, judges will not make as much of an effort to vote for donors.

As a further examination of our explanation, we would like to investigate, in the spirit Bronar

and Lott (1997), whether the behavior we have observed changes for judges who do not plan to

run for reelection.

Of course, we have a limited dataset for one year of decisions in five state supreme

courts, with 31 judges from those states. Though these states present diverse institutional and

state contexts to contour decision making they do not represent the full panoply of available

variation available to scholars of state politics at either the state or judge level. Once more data is

available we hope to refine our understanding of the conditions under which an exchange of

votes for campaign donations is more or less likely.

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Appendix

As noted in the text, we coded case-level data, including the votes of judges, from five state

supreme courts. Some of the judges in the five states that we selected did not vote in cases in

which a donor appeared in 2005 and so we have omitted those judges from our data. Further, we

did not consider donations in campaigns before 2000 which forced us to exclude several judges

in West Virginia. The table below lists the included judges.

Judges Included in the Study

Judge Name State Previous Election Hunstein GA 2000 Benham GA 2002 Hines GA 2002 Fletcher GA 2002 Sears GA 2004 Owen TX 2000 Hecht TX 2000 Jefferson TX 2002 Wainwright TX 2002 Brister TX 2004 Green TX 2004 O'Neill TX 2004 Davis WV 2000 Albright WV 2000 Benjamin WV 2004 Resnick OH 2000 Stratton OH 2002 O'Connor OH 2002 Moyer OH 2004 O'Donnell OH 2004 Lanzinger OH 2004 Cobb MS 2000 Smith MS 2000 Easley MS 2000 Dickinson MS 2002 Graves MS 2004 Randolph MS 2004 Carlson MS 2004

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Waller MS 2004

Several judges with potentially useable data do not appear in the table above. Justices Thompson

and Carley from Georgia and Justice Diaz from Mississippi did not vote in cases in which an

attorney donor appeared before them. Below are the descriptive statistics for variables included

in the models.

Descriptive Statistics

Variable Mean S.D. Min Max Dependent Variable 0.66 0.15 0.40 1 Electoral Margin 0.70 0.22 0.35 1 State Electoral Comp. 0.00 0.86 -0.83 1.17 % from Attorneys 0.43 0.30 0.04 1 Replaceability 0.00 1.00 -1.08 1.57 Years to Next Election 4.15 2.34 1 11 Average Ideological Dist 0.47 0.04 0.34 0.55 Instrument 0.00 1.00 -1.99 1.21

Finally, we provide the first stage regression coefficients from the instrumental variable

regression presented in Model 2 in the text.

First Stage Instrumental Variable Regression Results

Variables 1st Stage Reg Electoral Margin 0.080 (0.279) State Electoral Comp. 0.010 (0.050) Replaceability 0.225 (0.050) Years to Next Election 0.004 (0.023) Average Ideological Dist -0.268 (0.788) Instrument 0.080 (0.033)

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Constant 0.498 (0.326) N 31 F 18.73 (6, 24) Adj. R2 0.63

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Figure 1: Simple Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma

Note: Vi = the value of a vote for player i when the judge votes against her own policy preferences for a donor’s interests. c = the campaign contribution amount.

Donor Donate ~Donate

Judg

e

Vot

e

c – vj, vd – c -vj, vd

~Vot

e

c, -c 0, 0

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Table 1: Regression Results

Variables Model 1 Model 2* Electoral Margin -0.017 -0.136 (-0.109) (0.201) State Electoral Comp. -0.079 -0.079 (0.019) (0.031) % from Attorneys -0.214 0.120 (0.108) (0.307) Replaceability 0.045 -0.016 (0.034) (0.063) Years to Next Election -0.028 -0.026 (0.009) (0.012) Average Ideological Dist -1.293 -1.203 (0.405) (0.407) Constant 1.497 1.382 (0.222) (0.239) N 31 31 F 8.46 (6, 24) 8.13 (6, 24) Adj. R2 0.71 0.45

Dependent variable is percentage of votes in favor of attorney donors.

Bolded coefficients are significant at p<0.05 (two-tailed); standard errors are robust to heteroscedasticity.

*First stage regression results available in Appendix.