The California Supreme Court and the Death Penalty

Abstract

The California Supreme Court's death penalty decisions provide an ideal vehicle for examining the relationships among judicial selection, individual judicial decision making, and court policy-making. The authors' findings highlight the decisive impact that chief executives can have on judicial decisions through use of the appointment power and the overriding importance of judicial values for explaining judicial decisions. They also develop an integrated model that includes legal variables along with judicial values. Their findings show that liberal and conservative judges sometimes react differently to legal stimuli. Their research also demonstrates that more complete explanations for judicial decisions can be achieved by including legal issues with judicial values in a more complex explanatory model.