Shedding (Empirical) Light on Judicial Selection
Lee Epstein, Washington University in St. Louis

Missouri Law Review 74: 563-571 (2009) (Symposium)
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Introduction
Relative to commentators at Political Science and Economics meetings, the discussants at law conferences are generally quite kind, genteel even. They almost always say, “This is a really wonderful set of papers” – even if the papers are not so wonderful – or that they really learned a lot from the papers – even if they didn’t. Happily, with regard to the three papers the or-ganizers asked me to discuss,1 I need not stretch the truth for purposes of collegiality. I really do think they are a wonderful set of papers and really did learn a lot.

keywords: judicial selection, judicial independence, interest groups, campaign contributions, recusal standards, judicial careerism, non-renewable judicial terms, empirical judicial analysis, politicization of judicial selection, judicial accountability