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The Determinants of Legislators' Support for Judicial Reorganization

Appalachian State University

Robert T. Roper

Southern Illinois University

This article attempts to extend the concept of support into anarea that to date has received little attention—support for change in one institution by members of another. Specifi cally, we try to identify the determinants of support in the Kentucky legislature for structural reform of the state's judicial system. We suggest that legislators' expectations concerning impact of the proposed changes on both the administration of justice and local autonomy, as well as other variables like constituency opinion, urbanization, and occupation, affect legislative support for judicial reform. In testing the support model, we find that one institution's support for change in another institution is not only a function of the performance of the institution being evaluated (judiciary), but also results from certain political concerns of the evaluating institution (legislature) that have nothing to do with the merits of the actual reform.

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