{"title":"Political Ideology and the Law Review Selection Process","authors":"Chilton A, Masur J, Rozema K.","doi":"10.1093/aler/ahaa005","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<span><div>Abstract</div>We investigate the role that political ideology plays in the selection process for articles in law reviews. To do so, we match data on the political ideology of student editors from 15 top law reviews from 1990 to 2005 to data on the political ideology of the authors of accepted articles. We find that law reviews with a higher share of conservative editors accept a higher share of articles written by conservative authors. We then investigate potential explanations for this pattern. One possibility is that editors have a preference for publishing articles written by authors that share their ideology. Another possibility is that editors are objectively better at assessing the contribution of articles written by authors that share their ideology. We find evidence that the latter explanation drives the relationship between editor and author ideology.</span>","PeriodicalId":46133,"journal":{"name":"American Law and Economics Review","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0000,"publicationDate":"2020-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American Law and Economics Review","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahaa005","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We investigate the role that political ideology plays in the selection process for articles in law reviews. To do so, we match data on the political ideology of student editors from 15 top law reviews from 1990 to 2005 to data on the political ideology of the authors of accepted articles. We find that law reviews with a higher share of conservative editors accept a higher share of articles written by conservative authors. We then investigate potential explanations for this pattern. One possibility is that editors have a preference for publishing articles written by authors that share their ideology. Another possibility is that editors are objectively better at assessing the contribution of articles written by authors that share their ideology. We find evidence that the latter explanation drives the relationship between editor and author ideology.
期刊介绍:
The rise of the field of law and economics has been extremely rapid over the last 25 years. Among important developments of the 1990s has been the founding of the American Law and Economics Association. The creation and rapid expansion of the ALEA and the creation of parallel associations in Europe, Latin America, and Canada attest to the growing acceptance of the economic perspective on law by judges, practitioners, and policy-makers.