Consensus and Cooperation on State Supreme Courts

The opinion-writing process is a vital yet understudied aspect of judicial decision making on state supreme courts. We argue that this process is influenced by the political context and particularly by institutional rules that serve to reactivate and reinforce divisions among justices, leading to less cooperation on the court. We test our theory with original data comprising all education cases decided from 1995 to 2005 in all 50 states and find evidence to support our theory. Specifically, we find that elections lead to fewer unanimous decisions and more separate written opinions, indicating that judicial elections may have a more pervasive effect on the daily work of these courts than previously thought.