Where You Stand Depends on Who Sits: Platform Promises and Judicial Gatekeeping in the Federal District Courts

A burgeoning body of research has identified a persistent link between the politics of federal judicial appointments and patterns of judicial judgment. Moreover, appointment effects on district judges' substantive judgments have increased dramatically in tandem with equally dramatic increases in the politicization of judicial appointments during the Reagan administration. In this note, we shift the research focus from substantive judgments to procedural disputes over who has standing to sue in the federal trial courts. We find that, despite their platform-based commitment to "judicial restraint," Reagan appointees are much less likely than Nixon or Carter appointees to deny disputed standing to "upperdog" claimants. However, when the claimant is an "underdog" claiming standing to sue corporate or governmental defendants, Reagan appointees are twice as likely as Nixon appointees and four times as likely as Carter appointees to deny access. The Carter appointees, on the other hand, are twice as likely as the Nixon appointees and four times as likely as the Reagan appointees to grant disputed standing to underdog proponents of social regulation.