That, of course, is the motto of the American Bar Association. Now, hot off the press from the upcoming MPSA meeting (search the program here) is a paper by Richard Vining, Amy Steigerwalt, and Susan Smelcer, "Bias and the Bar: Evaluating the ABA Ratings of Federal Judicial Nominees." The punch line:
Our findings suggest the presence of some systematic bias toward Democratic nominees in the ABA's ratings, especially to the extent that a particularly nominee will be rated as "Well Qualified."
The authors are appropriately circumspect about the reasons for their findings. Nonetheless, their results are very robust, and can't be dismissed lightly. In addition to Adam Liptak's Sidebar column, the paper is already getting some play on the blogs (now including this one!), and it's definitely worth a read.
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