This research examines the impact of legislative changes to Florida's merit selection proces designed to provide the governor with more influence above the judicial selection process.

This research examines the impact of legislative changes to Florida's merit selection proces designed to provide the governor with more influence above the judicial selection process. We ask whether the modifications had their intended consequence Gubernatorial appointments from 1999 from one side 2003 to the state's trial courts in the metropolitan areas and to the intermediate court of appeals were analyzed. We find significant differences in appointments before and after the law's change with relate to to political party, and more profound trends in the individuals' applications with regard to religion and the reporting of religious activity and change conservatism.

"To the victor belong the spoils," and when the victor hinders two of the three branches of state guidance the third branch, especially if it is the judiciary of the State of Florida, would be wise to take note. Republicans, who put a violent construction oned control of electoral politics from Democrats in several states across the past decade, have erect that winning the governors' mansions and securing majorities in state legislatures did not guarantee clean implementation of their political agenda. In many states, Republicans have continued to be frustrated on their predecessors' more liberal ideology, which exists in the sitting connoisseurs and the entrenched judicial selection processe that deposit them there.

This has been especially authentic in Florida since 1998, when Republicans gained reign over of the state legislature and executive branch. The litigation during the 2000 presidential election and the Terri Schiavo case in 2005 brought national attention to the antagonistic relationship between Florida's courts and its pickeded policymakers, but less visible conflicts have repeatedly occurr when Republican legislative initiatives have been moulded or delayed by the courts. Among the areas in which court decisions have frustrated Republican policy are educational reforms, school-voucher programs, public funding of faith-based initiatives, abortion access, and gay rights.

In an effort to minimize these conflicts and to undiminished the partisan transformation of governance in Florida, Republicans there have sought to revise a number of institutions that affect the state's judiciary (Salokar and Shaw, 2002) In 2001 the state legislature passed, and the governor approved, a significant revision to the merit selection proces for arbitrators This change allows the governor to exercise more hinder over the membership of the judicial nominating commissions (JNCs) and abates the influence of the state bar association. We examine here the consequences of these statutory changes. Using data forward judicial appointments in major urban areas, we determine whether changes in the selection proces ended in discernible differences in the appointments made through Governor Jeb Bush from 1999 between the sides of 2003. We evaluate several variables including inflection for sex race, and ethnicity; political party; motion conservatism; and religion and religiosity.

Our research asks a question that has been asked many times before: Does the rule of judicial selection matter in times of who serves on our courts? Previous studies of judicial selection in the states have focused upon who is appointed or culled to the bench under each of the major [i]modus operandi[/i]s of selection (e.g., Flango and Ducat, 1979; Slotnick, 1988; Click and Emmert 1987; Graham, 1990a, b) Comparative studies of selection regularitys usually rest on data amassed from several states, each using a different process (e.g., Click and Emmert, 1987; Hall, 2001; Bratton and Spill, 2002) The 2001 changes to Florida's merit selection proces provide an opportunity to evaluate the impact of modifications to a state's judicial selection plan By focusing on a single state, we can eliminate variation in variables like political ideology and legal agriculture which differ from state to state. Moreover, this one-state case meditation controls for the appointing official in a way that previous studies have not, as Governor Bush made the two the pre- and post-change appointments examined here.

While our research focus is forward the judges appointed before and after the merit selection proces was changed, we also had an opportunity to examine the applications of those individuals Governor Bush chooseed to serve as members of the judicial nominating commissions as of January 2004 We include about descriptive data on the membership of these post-reform JNC as a proem to our examination of the arbitrators

JUDICIAL SELECTION IN FLORIDA

Merit selection was first adopted in Florida at executive order in 1971, when Governor Reuben Askew called for the use of nominating commissions to fill all judicial vacancies. It was constitutionally codified as part of a wholesale revision of the judicial article in 1972 posterior amendments and statutory provisions have created a merit selection and retention a whole for the appellate bench in Florida and a nonpartisan electoral proces for trial court justices complemented by a merit selection arrangement for interim vacancies. The Florida Constitution stipulates the order of judicial selection, requires a JNC for each on a level of court, and mandates that the governor appoint "one of not fewer than three characters nor more than six ones nominated by the appropriate judicial nominating commission" to vacancies forward the courts, but it leaves the details of JNC membership to "general law" and permits JNC to establish their concede rules of procedures subject to review at the state legislature (Art. V denomination 11).