The proposition that elections are essential instruments for imposing democratic accountability on government policymakers is widely accepted among scholars of the executive and legislative branch. However, when it comes to the judicial branch, the concept of electoral accountability is far more controversial (e.g., Chris W. Bonneau and Melinda Gann Hall, In Defense of Judicial Elections, 2009). Normative arguments in favor of subjecting judges to elections have provoked spirited debates among scholars and other observers of the legal process, largely centering on the divide between the competing ideals of electoral accountability and judicial independence.

Meanwhile, as this normative debate has raged over the past few decades, scholars have begun to compile an extensive body of research documenting the empirical realities of judicial elections (see Herbert M. Kritzer, Justices on the Ballot, 2015). Since federal judges are appointed and have lifetime tenure, it is at the state level, where most judges are subject to some form of electoral mechanism to attain or retain their position on the bench, that this line of research has shed light on how judicial elections work in practice. Collectively, the findings of these studies paint a mixed picture of whether voters can meaningfully participate in the electoral process for selecting and retaining judges. Nevertheless, as much as the literature on state judicial elections has illuminated quite a bit about how they function, this research is dominated by aggregate analyses that make somewhat tenuous assumptions about individual voter behavior in these races.

In Voters’ Verdicts, Chris Bonneau and Damon Cann have undertaken the most comprehensive scholarly examination of individual-level voter behavior in judicial elections to date. Employing survey data from the Congressional Cooperative Election Survey and experimental methods, the authors provide fresh insight into the factors that influence citizens’ decision making when casting ballots for state supreme court candidates in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Defenders of expanding democratic control over the judiciary will find the authors’ results heartening. Overall, their study paints a portrait of voters in judicial elections capable of living up to their democratic responsibilities. The evidence indicates that voters in state supreme court elections do not decide to participate randomly; rather, they respond rationally to institutional and electoral incentives that influence the information costs associated with casting ballots.

One of the most critical empirical findings confirmed in the book is that the institutional frameworks under which judicial elections are conducted have a significant impact on whether voters decide to participate and for whom they choose to cast their ballots, the most critical being whether the election takes place with partisan labels on the ballot. Corroborating previous evidence at the aggregate level, the authors find that voters are most likely to cast a ballot in contested elections where the partisanship of the candidates is identified. The individual-level evidence is clear: Institutional electoral rules matter, and the optimal conditions that facilitate voter participation in supreme court elections are competitive partisan elections.

Another contribution emanating from this work is that even when individuals are not given clear indication of a judicial candidates’ partisanship on the ballot, it still factors heavily into their vote choice. Analyzing both observational and experimental data, Bonneau and Cann demonstrate that even in nonpartisan elections, sufficient information is supplied to most citizens during supreme court campaigns that enables them to vote for a candidate who lines up with their party identification. This finding runs counter to the aims of reformers who favor nonpartisan elections as a means of preventing voters from reflexively relying on partisan cues to select their preferred judicial candidate.

An additional finding of note is the nature of the incumbency advantage in judicial elections. As in other elections, incumbent judges tend to outperform other candidates. However, through their experimental and observational analyses, the authors are able to demonstrate that individual voters do not support judicial candidates on the basis of a preference for reelecting sitting incumbents. Incumbent judges tend to enjoy greater electoral success due to factors like an ability to outspend their challengers, not because of an inherent desire on the part of the voters to keep incumbents in power. The individual-level analyses conducted by the authors reveal this phenomenon in a way that previous aggregate studies of supreme court elections have not been capable of doing.

While Voters’ Verdicts breaks new ground in the study of judicial elections, it does have its limitations, a reality the authors themselves commendably point out. The most glaring is that the analyses are confined only to state supreme court elections. On one level, it makes sense to focus on elections for the positions that have the final say on laws in their respective states. However, since supreme court elections represent only a small percentage of the judicial elections held in the United States, there are legitimate questions about whether the results would hold in lower-profile contests. For instance, it might be much more challenging for voters to infer the partisanship of judicial candidates in nonpartisan elections for seats on intermediate appellate and trial courts.

The time frame for the study is another valid, albeit minor, criticism. Bonneau and Cann’s analysis is limited to the 2010 and 2012 elections. On the whole, there was nothing extraordinary about the context of these cycles when viewed through the prism of judicial elections. However, future individual-level analyses of judicial elections can help undercut the proposition that the evidence they have unearthed is attributable to any idiosyncratic factors unique to 2010 and 2012 cycles, rather than general patterns typical of supreme court elections more broadly.

Considering the intense passion that characterizes the factions in the debate over state judicial elections, Voters’ Verdicts is not likely to change the minds of committed advocates on either side of the pro—judicial independence versus pro-accountability divide. Nevertheless, whatever normative view one holds about the advisability of judicial elections, the empirical work of Bonneau and Cann cannot be ignored. Critics of elections for the judiciary have even less ammunition for their contention that voters are not up to the task of performing their democratic responsibilities. This book has further eroded the myth that voters in judicial elections are clueless participants making random decisions about who sits on the judiciary. Citizens can participate in state supreme court elections with a level of voter competence on par with many elections for legislative and executive offices. One need not agree with the means by which they do so, such as overreliance on the partisan cue, to appreciate the reality that voter decisions are reasonably well informed in most cases.

There is still much work to be done to fully understand the nature of voting behavior in state judicial elections, but Bonneau and Cann have established a powerful base of knowledge from which future research will draw for decades to come. Even critics of judicial elections should feel compelled to acknowledge their vital contribution to the field.