Michael J. Nelson, professor and head of Penn State’s Department of Political Science, and his co-authors recently received the 2024 C. Herman Pritchett Award for their book, “The Elevator Effect: Contact and Collegiality in the American Judiciary,” which was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. “The Elevator Effect” examines how the interpersonal relationships forged among judges sitting on U.S. federal appellate courts inform their decisions. Essentially, Nelson and his co-authors argue, those relationships significantly diminish the role of ideology on judicial decision making. Read more here.
