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Judicial Politics and Sentencing Decisions

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Listed:
  • Alma Cohen
  • Crystal Yang

Abstract

This paper investigates whether judge political affiliation contributes to racial and gender disparities in sentencing using data on over 500,000 federal defendants linked to sentencing judge. Exploiting random case assignment, we find that Republican-appointed judges sentence black defendants to 3.0 more months than similar non-blacks and female defendants to 2.0 fewer months than similar males compared to Democratic-appointed judges, 65 percent of the baseline racial sentence gap and 17 percent of the baseline gender sentence gap, respectively. These differences cannot be explained by other judge characteristics and grow substantially larger when judges are granted more discretion.

Suggested Citation

  • Alma Cohen & Crystal Yang, 2018. "Judicial Politics and Sentencing Decisions," NBER Working Papers 24615, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24615
    Note: LE PE
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    JEL classification:

    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • K0 - Law and Economics - - General
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law

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