Judicious Representation: Democratic High Courts and the Reinforcement of Majority Will.

This research seeks to explore the tole of justice in the democratic context and, to this end, it will examine the impact of democratic politics on the judicial handling of capital punishment across the US and how this affects the decisions of states on who should live and who should die. I will explore if and how public sentiment influences the judicial outcome of death penalty appeals at the state supreme court level. For this purpose, I utilize data on both direct and state post-conviction appeals of the death penalty across 34 US states for the years 1973 to 1995. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]