Voluntary Retirements from State Supreme Courts: Assessing Democratic Pressures to Relinquish the Bench

This article assesses whether electoral vulnerability promotes strategic retirements in state supreme courts and, more generally, whether elections are more effective in promoting democratic control of the bench than believed. Results indicate that voluntary retirements are influenced by electoral considerations, but only when justices are retained in partisan or retention elections. With nonpartisan elections, these effects are absent. Through the lens of judicial reform, these findings suggest that some arguments for abandoning partisan elections and adopting the Missouri Plan may lack merit and that the premises underlying institutional design should be reconsidered. Moreover, studies of judicial choice must be attentive both to strategy and context.