70 JUDICATURE Volume 91, Number 2 September-October 2007 A dvocates of judicial elections have long held that they are essential if judges are to be held account- able to the public. While several of the founding fathers, including Hamilton, believed that federal judges should be insulated from the public to promote judicial independence, this has not been the predomi- nate view at the state level. Indeed, 39 states have some sort of elec- tion mechanism to select at least some of their judges. While organizations such as the American Bar Association and the American Judicature Society have regularly argued against judicial elections, their worries seem to have fallen on deaf ears. 1 Polls find that the public strongly supports the election of state judges, 2 and attempts to make the judicial selection process less democratic regularly fail. 3 Given the fact that judicial elections are here to stay for the foreseeable future, we need to understand whether they function as supporters of judicial elections argue they should. In other words, do judicial elections have the potential to promote accountability? While Hall has addressed this question at the supreme court level, to our knowledge no one has systematically analyzed judicial accountability below the supreme court level. 4 In order to fill this empirical void, we examine results for all interme- diate appellate court general elections (partisan, nonpar- tisan, and retention) from 2000-2006. We compare those results to elections for the U.S. House of Representatives and state supreme courts over the same time period. We find that the chief obstacle to accountability in intermediate appellate elections is to get people to run in the first place. A sizable proportion of intermediate appel- late judges do not face any opposition. However, con- tested intermediate appellate elections look quite similar to those elections for the U.S. House and state supreme courts in terms of the share of the vote won by the incum- bent and the number of incumbents who are defeated. Finally, these results con- firm the worries of many observers who oppose retention elections because they feel those elections are tanta- mount to giving judges life-time tenure. Only one inter- mediate appellate judge was not retained over the period of study and, on average, about 75 percent of the public voted to retain intermediate appellate judges. Accountability At the heart of the battle surrounding judicial elections are arguments over judicial accountability and judicial independence. Supporters of judicial elections claim that they are essential to hold judges accountable to the pub- Contestation, competition, and the potential for ACCOUNTABILITY in intermediate APPELLATE COURT ELECTIONS by MATTHEW J. STREB, BRIAN FREDERICK, and CASEY LAFRANCE We thank Lawrence Baum, Melinda Gann Hall, C. Scott Peters, Margaret Williams, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previ- ous drafts of this manuscript. Any errors are, of course, our responsibility. 1. Matthew J. Streb, Judicial Elections: A Different Standard For the Rulemakers, in Matthew J. Streb ed., LAW AND ELECTION POLITICS:THE RULES OF THE GAME (Boulder: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2005). 2. Justice at Stake Campaign. 2001. “Poll of American Voters.” Conducted by Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research Inc. October 30-November 7. <http://www.justiceatstake.org>. 3. Matthew J. Streb & Brian Frederick, Judicial Reform and the Future of Judi- cial Elections, in Matthew J. Streb, ed., RUNNING FOR JUDGE:THE RISING POLIT- ICAL, FINANCIAL, AND LEGAL STAKES OF JUDICIAL ELECTIONS (New York: NYU Press, 2007). 4. Melinda Gann Hall, State Supreme Courts in American Democracy: Probing the Myths of Judicial Reform, 95 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 315-330. (2001); Melinda Gann Hall, Competition as Accountability in State Supreme Court Elections, in Matthew J. Streb, ed., supra n. 3. Although few intermediate appellate judges are actually challenged, when they are they face tough races and many actually lose. PHOTODISC