Letter from the Editor

Welcome to the final issue of Volume 41 for the Justice System Journal (JSJ). JSJ is published under an arrangement between the National Center for State Courts and Routledge (Taylor & Francis). The journal’s commitment is to providing an outlet for innovative, social scientific research on the myriad of issues that pertain to the third branch of government. Information about JSJ, including the journal’s aims & scopes as well as instructions for manuscript submissions, can be found at our website: http://www.tandfonline.com/ujsj. Manuscript submissions are processed solely online through the ScholarOne system, and the direct link to submit a manuscript is http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ujsj. I want to begin by offering a special thanks to the usually faceless individuals who volunteer their time and effort to make this journal a success: our many reviewers. Included in this issue is a list of everyone who reviewed a manuscript for JSJ in 2020. Reviewing is a thankless job, but also a vital one; peer review is the backbone of the scholastic enterprise, and this journal would not exist without all of you. In a year marked by tremendous uncertainty, sickness and loss, the willingness of the members of this community to devote their time to reading and offering thoughtful feedback on each other’s work (and a not insignificant number reviewed multiple times this year)—and everyone’s patience and understanding as we all dealt with a multitude of challenges—was a very welcome reminder of the reasons why we chose to join this academic community. My sincerest thank you to everyone for your help in supporting our academic community. Leading off this final issue of 2020, we begin with “The impact of retention systems on judicial behavior: a synthetic controls analysis of state supreme courts” by Kristen M. Renberg (Duke University). Renberg delves into the question of the impact of judicial retention system on judicial behavior by asking whether and how judicial behavior may change if the method by which a judge is selected changes. Utilizing a relatively novel methodology for analyzing judicial behavior, synthetic controls, Renberg assesses whether a change from partisan elections to nonpartisan elections on a state court leads to changes in behavior by the judges of those courts, as compared to state courts where no such institutional design changes were implemented. This method allows for a more direct causal test of whether structural changes, as opposed to other forces, are what truly account for potential changes in judicial behavior. Notably, she finds that one important byproduct of a move toward nonpartisan judicial elections is a subsequent increase in the rate of dissensus. These findings have important implications for our continuing debates over how best to select judges for the highest courts throughout the United States. We continue our examination of state court elections with “Have state supreme court elections nationalized?” by Aaron Weinschenk, Mandi Baker, Zoe Betancourt, Vanessa Depies, Nathan Erck, Quinne Herolt, Amanda Loehrke, Cameron Makurat, Hannah Malmberg, Clarice Martell, Jared Novitzke, Bradley Riddle, Tara Sellen, Leah Tauferner, and Emily Zilliox, all from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Asking a question especially relevant in 2020, this study explores whether a link exists between presidential vote patterns and elections to state high courts, and how such a link may have changed over time. Based on an examination of an original dataset of county-level state high court election results from 2000 to 2018, they find that state high court elections, and particularly partisan judicial elections, are strongly linked to