WaPo on Eric Posner Study: Judicial Loyalty Effect is Evident
Justices Tend to Agree with Presidents that Pick Them — but Stray Later
If you are a justice of the Supreme Court, there’s no president like your first president.
Most members of the court make more decisions favorable to the president who brought them to the dance than they do to subsequent presidents, even those of the same party, according to a new study by two prominent Supreme Court experts.
The law professors say what they call the “loyalty effect” is evident even when other factors such as ideology and a personal relationship with the appointing president are taken into account.
“However, the loyalty effect is much stronger for Democratic justices than for Republicans justices,” write Lee Epstein, of Washington University in St. Louis, and Eric A. Posner, of the University of Chicago.
Read more at Washington Post