Paths To the Bench in Britain: a Quasi-Experimental Study of the Recruitment of a Judicial Elite

• Author: C. Neal Tate
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297502800107
• Published date: 01 March 1975
• Date: 01 March 1975
• Subject Matter: Articles

PATHS TO THE BENCH IN BRITAIN:
A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE
RECRUITMENT OF A JUDICIAL ELITE
C. NEAL TATE
North Texas State University
HIS
PAPER has three purposes -
one descriptive, one explanatory,
and one methodological. Descriptively, it seeks to summarize the social
-*-
and career characteristics of the persons serving in the higher British
judiciary since its reorganization in the 1870s. Its explanatory purpose is to
identify the crucial factors which promote recruitment up the ranks of the
British judicial hierarchy or, alternatively, the factors which promote differential,
recruitment to the various ranks of that hierarchy. In seeking to explain the
recruitment of British judges it will also serve a methodological purpose: that
of illustrating the desirability of applying a &dquo;quasi-experimental&dquo; research design
to test hypotheses concerning political recruitment.
Studies of the social backgrounds and career characteristics of judicial elites
are now almost commonplace. The studies of Ewing and Schmidhauser on the
United States Supreme Court justices have been supplemented by treatments of
the backgrounds of American lower federal and state court judges, and of judges
in a variety of non-American courts.’ In most cases a scholarly interest in judicial
NOTE : This paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science
Association, Denver, Colorado, April 4-6, 1974. I am grateful to the North Texas State
University Committee on Faculty Research for their support of this research, The
research would not have been possible without the diligent labors of my graduate assistant,
Ms. Kay Dickenson. She receives my sincere thanks.
1
See, for example, Rodney D. Mott, Spencer D. Albright, and Helen R. Semmerling, "Judicial
Personnel," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 167 (1933),
143-55; Kenneth N. Vines, "The Selection of Judges in Louisiana," in Vines and Herbert
Jacob, Studies in Judicial Politics (New Orleans: Tulane University Studies in Poiltical
Science, 1962); Emmet W. Bashful, The Florida Supreme Court: A Study in Judicial
Selection (Talahassee: Florida State University, Bureau of Governmental Research
and Services, 1958); Sheldon Goldman, "Politics, Judges, and the Administration of
Justice" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1965) ; James Allen Dator,
"The Life History and Attitudes of Japanese High Court Judges," Western Political
Quarterly, 20 (June 1967), 408-39; David Danelski, "The Supreme Court of Japan: An
Exploratory Study," in Glendon Schubert and Danelski, eds., Comparative Judicial
Behavior: Cross-Cultural Studies in Political Decision-Making in the East and West
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1969) ; Ulf Torgerson, "The Role of the Supreme
Court in the Norwegian Political System," in Glendon Schubert, ed., Judicial Decision-
Making (New York: Free Press, 1962); Glendon Schubert, "The High Court and the
Supreme Court: Two Styles of Judicial Hierocracy," unpublished paper delivered at
the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, 1966;
Donald Kommers, "The Federal Constitutional Court in the West German Political
System," in Joel Grossman and Joseph Tanenhaus, eds., Frontiers of Judicial Research
(New York: Wiley, 1969) ; Fred L. Morrison, "The Swiss Federal Court: Judicial Re-
cruitment and Decision-Making," in Schubert and Danelski, Comparative Judicial
Behavior; George Gadbois, "Indian Supreme Court Judges: A Portrait," Law and
Society Review, 3 (1969), 317-36, and "Selection, Background Characteristics, and
Voting Behavior of Indian Supreme Court Judges, 1950-1959," in Schubert and Danel-
ski, Comparative Judicial Behavior; Abelardo G. Samonte, ’The Philippine Supreme
Court: A Study of Judicial Attributes, Attitudes, and Decision-Making," in Schubert
and Danelski, Comparative Judicial Behavior; C. Neal Tate, "The Social Background,
108

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109
backgrounds is accompanied by the (usually explicit) assumption that back-
grounds are important because they influence judicial decision-making. Even if
no overt effort is made to link backgrounds and decisions,’ studies of judicial
characteristics may be justified as essential first steps to investigating the back-
grounds-decisions linkage. There are other reasons for investigating judicial
backgrounds, however. If judges are admitted to be political elites, then their
backgrounds should be intrinsically as interesting as those of other political
decision-makers: executives, legislators, or bureaucrats. Further, like informa-
tion on the background traits of these other political elites, judicial back-
ground and career characteristics may provide information about the values
and the distribution of political influence of a society and a &dquo;gauge&dquo; for the
measurement of social and political changed
Political Recruitment, and Decision-Making of the Philippine Supreme Court Justices,
1901-1968" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Tulane University, 1971).
2
For overt efforts to examine the impact of background characteristics on decision-making
behaviors, see John R. Schmidhauser, "Judicial Behavior and the Sectional Crisis of
1837-1860," Journal of Politics, 23 (1961), 614-40, and "Stare Decisis, Dissent, and
the Background of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States," Univer-
sity of Toronto Law Journal, 14 (1962), 194-212; Stuart Nagel, "Ethnic Affiliations
and Judicial Propensities," Journal of Politics, 24 (1962), 92-110, "Judicial Back-
grounds and Criminal Cases," Journal of Criminal Law, Crimonology, and Police Sci-
ence, 53 (1962), 333-39, and "Political Party Affiliation and Judges’ Decisions,"
American Political Science Review, 55 (1961), 843-50; Glendon Schubert, Quantita-
Analysis of Judicial Behavior (New York: Free Press, 1959) ; Kenneth N. Vines, "Federal
District Judges and Race Relations Cases in the South," Journal of Politics, 26 (1964),
337-57; Sheldon Goldman, "Voting Behavior on the United States Courts of Appeals,"
American Political Science Review, 60 (1966), 374-83, and "Voting Behavior on the
United States Courts of Appeals Revisited," unpublished paper delivered to the Annual
Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, 1973; David W.
Adamany, "The Party Variable in Judges’ Voting: Conceptual Notes and a Case Study,"
American Political Science Review, 63 (1969), 57-73; Eugene E. Lindstrom, "Attri-
butes Affecting the Voting Behavior of Supreme Court Justices, 1889-1959" (unpub-
lished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1968) ; Don R. Bowen, "The Explanation
of Judicial Voting Behavior from Sociological Characteristics of Judges" (unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1965); Richard E. Johnston, "A Comparison of
the Warren and Burger Courts," unpublished paper delivered to the Annual Meeting of
the Western Political Science Association, Denver, 1974; Bradley C. Canon and Dean
Jaros, "Dissent on State Supreme Courts: The Significance of Characteristics of Judges,"
Midwest Journal of Political Science, 15 (1971), 322 ff; S. Sidney Ulmer, "The Political
Party Variable in the Michigan Supreme Court," Journal of Public Law, 11 (1962),
352-62, "Dissent Behavior and the Social Background of Supreme Court Justices,"
Journal of Politics, 32 (1970), 580-98, and "Social Background as an Indicator to the
Votes of Supreme Court Justices in Criminal Cases, 1947-1956 Terms," Midwest
Journal of Political Science, 17 (1973), 622-30; Edward N. Beiser and Johnathan J.
Silberman, "The Political Party Variable: Workmen’s Compensation Cases in the New
York Court of Appeals," Polity, 3 ( 1971 ) , 521 ff.; Malcolm M. Feeley, "Another Look
at the ’Party Variable’ in Judicial Decision-Making: An Analysis of the Michigan
Supreme Court," Polity, 4 (1971), 91 ff.; Thomas Walker, "A Note Concerning Partisan
Influences on Trial-Judge Decision-Making," Law and Society Review, 6 (1972), 645
ff.; Takeyoshi Kawashima, "Individualism in Decision-Making in the Supreme Court
of Japan," in Schubert and Danelski, Comparative Judicial Behavior; Danelski, "The
Supreme Court of Japan," loc. cit; Thomas R. Hensley, "National Bias and the Inter-
national Court of Justice," Midwest Journal of Political Science, 12 (1968), 568-86; C.
Neal Tate, "Social Background and Voting Behavior in the Philippine Supreme Court,"
Lawasia, 3 (1972), 318-38.
3
For these arguments see Henry R. Glick, "Political Recruitment in Sarawak: A Case Study
of Leadership in a New State," Journal of Politics, 28 (1966), 81-99.

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110
From the perspective of comparative politics, judicial background charac-
teristics may be important in developing explanations for one of the crucial
functions performed by political systems: the recruitment of actors to political
roles. In this case, background characteristics are linked as independent variables
to recruitment patterns rather than to decisional tendencies as dependent vari-
ables. The recruitment of individuals to elite political roles is explained by
observing the characteristics of the recruited individuals in comparison with
those of another group of individuals serving as a rough &dquo;control group.&dquo;
Usually, the &dquo;control group&dquo; is the mass population, and recruitment is ex-
plained by noting that, on the whole, the elite is wealthier, better educated,
more politically active, et cetera, than the mass. While there are important
differences in the degree to which given elites represent their...