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Abstract
There has long been concern that federal judges have been appointed as a means of implementing presidential philosophy and may therefore be susceptible to political influences when deciding cases. In this preliminary study, we assess the impact of case characteristics, the president responsible for judicial appointment, and related factors in order to evaluate the decision making differences between presidential appointments. Using data from prisoner civil rights complaints filed in Illinois’ Northern Federal District, we employ two currently popular conceptual models—the merits model (associated with legal formalism) and the politicization model (associated with legal realism)—to assess the differences between judges appointed by different presidents. We find that rates of granting in forma pauperis petitions from prisoners are found to vary systematically among judges appointed by six different presidents as a function of (1) the president who appointed the judge, (2) the president's political philosophy, and (3) the grounds on which the petition was filed, providing some support for the politicization model. We conclude with several caveats and directions for further research.