Essays on the courts and the judiciary

This dissertation consists of three essays on the courts and the judiciary. These essays explore the role of preferences on judicial decisions, highlighting the crucial interaction between judicial preferences and the institutional framework governing the decision-making process.;The first two essays consider how electoral incentives can impact judges' sentencing behavior. The first essay, Crime, Punishment and Politics shows that judges impose harsher sentences in the shadow of electoral pressure and that they do so mostly by exercising their discretion and imposing sentences that are above the applicable sentencing guidelines range.;The second essay, The Politics of Sentencing further probes these results, presenting evidence that judges who engage in this "cycling" behavior are less likely to face electoral competition. In addition, this essay presents evidence that judges prefer to increase the sentences of habitual offenders when facing electoral pressure and that judges exercise more care and impose more "individualized" sentences towards the end of the electoral cycle.;The third essay, It's the Journey not the Destination, examines how the role of political preferences on judicial decision---making is mediated by the panel structure in which judges hear cases at the appellate level. Testing the limits of the attitudinal model, this essay presents evidence that ideology relates to more than just differences in preferences over final outcomes, but is also associated with differences in judicial philosophy and judges' approach to the deliberation process. Consistent with this idea, legal education and professional experience appear to be as important as ideology in explaining judicial decision-making. Finally, the results indicate that judges' preferences are mediated by that of the other members in the panel as well as by a judge's prior interactions with judges of different political views, suggesting that "panel effects" result from the exchange of ideas and knowledge among judges and not necessarily from strategic behavior in support of an ideological position.