The Role of Judge Ideology in Strategic Retirements in U.S. Federal Courts

Abstract

The widely recognized phenomenon of federal judges retiring strategically has key implications for the composition of the judiciary, particularly given polarization between the two U.S. political parties. Using fine-grained measures of judicial ideology, we examine how ideology shapes such strategic retirements. First, we show that since Reagan’s election, Democratic appointees to lower federal courts have been more likely to retire strategically than Republican ones. Second, we find that more ideologically conservative Republican appointees are more likely to strategically retire than are moderate Republican appointees but only suggestive evidence of a similar pattern among more liberal Democratic appointees. Third, as explanation, we find that moderate Republican appointees appear to “wait out” retiring strategically under more conservative recent presidents, such as Donald Trump, opting instead to retire under Democrats such as Joe Biden. Taken together, our results offer a key insight: ideology, and not just party, can be an important factor in driving strategic retirement.