Direct legislative appointment yields the lowest average partisan confidence score for state supreme court justices of any method, according to the Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship study. The Michigan-Ohio method produced the highest average partisan confidence score of 11 for all justices, while the direct legislative appointment method produced an average partisan confidence score of 5 for its justices.
In addition to recording the lowest average partisan confidence score for justices, the direct legislative appointment method produced a court balance score of 3.7. The court balance score recorded for direct legislative appointment was the fifth-highest across the eight selection methods. We arrived at a court balance score by finding the average of partisan confidence scores while accounting for the differences between Democrats and Republicans, whereas the average score, also referred to as the pure partisanship score, is the average of all scores without regard to the differences between Democrats and Republicans.
Although the direct legislative appointment method produced a low average partisanship score for its justices, this could be due to the fact that it is used in fewer states than other methods. Only South Carolina and Virginia use direct legislative appointment.
South Carolina has four justices with mild Republican affiliation and one justice with indeterminate partisan affiliation. The court balance score for South Carolina is 4.2, mildly Republican. The pure partisanship score for South Carolina’s justices is 4.6, compared to the national average of 7.
Virginia has one justice with strong Republican affiliation, three justices with mild Republican affiliation, one justice with mild Democratic affiliation, and two justices with indeterminate partisan affiliation. The court balance score for Virginia is 3.3, mildly Republican. The pure partisanship score for Virginia’s justices is 5.3, compared to the national average of 7.
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