Judges, Judging, and Judgment: Character, Wisdom, and Humility in a Polarized World by Chad M. Oldfather

Clicks: 1
ID: 320008
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal

Ranked #73 of 75 articles by views in political science quarterly

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
In Judges, Judging, and Judgment, law Professor Chad Oldfather mounts an interdisciplinary critique of the current U.S. judiciary, offering a corrective to the ways in which we evaluate and choose candidates for judgeships. Dominated by politics and rife with political polarization, our generally empirical approach to understanding all things including judges and their behavior leads those who appoint or elect judges to rely heavily on ideology to evaluate and predict the contributions judicial candidates will make. Oldfather argues that, because we pin qualifications only to things that we can measure and because, using empirical measures, we invariably conclude that all that matters is partisan affiliation (or maybe policy predisposition), we forget (and judges forget) that judges are not mere politicians. The entire reason we have courts is to authoritatively resolve disputes; and for judges to ably resolve especially contentious disputes, they must exercise judgment. When judges do so with independence and relying on preexisting legal norms, they earn and maintain public trust, guarding the rule of law, essential to a democratic society. What we need to do, according to Oldfather, is to choose judges who do the work of judging well. Getting the right judges is impossible given the currently emphasized considerations. Only if we start taking seriously the fact that good judges and good judging require good judgment can we hope to undo the damage to court legitimacy that our current situation has wrought.
Reference Key
openalex_W7167615960 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Sara C. Benesh
Journal political science quarterly
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/psquar/qqag040
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/psquar/qqag040
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.