The decision making of Hispanic judges on the U.S. courts of appeals, 2003-2004

After an overview of the present literature and a summary of the current state of diversity in the federal judiciary, I generate hypotheses and expectations that will be evaluated using data from the Phase III update to the Multi-User Courts of Appeals Database Project (2012). Then, I construct preliminary bivariate analysis of race and voting from the 2003-2004 case data. Next, the effect of race and ethnicity on judges votes in the U.S. courts of appeals is estimated through multivariate models, first in a pooled model and then in models sorted by the appointing presidents political party. Institutional-level controls and demographic variables aid me in evaluating the findings of other judicial politics studies. My interpretation of the results suggests that race and ethnicity are not related to judicial voting. The concluding discussion assesses opportunities for the direction of future research.