Partisanship Suppressed: Judicial Decision-Making in Ralph Nader's 2004 Ballot Access Litigation.

Partisanship is a non-legal factor that could wield considerable influence over the judicial decision-making process of state court judges. This paper considers the effects of partisanship on judicial decision-making by examining Ralph Nader's ballot access litigation in the 2004 presidential election. Specifically, this study analyzes 109 votes cast by state trial, appellate, and supreme court judges from fifteen states regarding the question of whether Nader should be granted ballot access. I hypothesize that Democratic judges would be less likely to rule in Nader's favor compared to Republican judges. After controlling for several factors that could influence judicial decision-making, the preliminary probit analysis suggests that partisanship is not a significant factor that predicts a judge's ruling. Instead, state judges were more likely to defer to the initial ballot access decision of the state election authority when ruling in these cases. Thus, even in a highly partisan electoral environment, it appears that judges did not allow partisanship to influence their legal decisions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]