The prestige and influence of individual judges on the US courts of appeals

Judicial scholars have often recognized that prestige seems to vary among j udges, but they have not devoted much systematic attention to the phenomeno n or its consequences. In this article, we develop a measure of prestige an d calculate prestige scores for a sample of 139 federal circuit court judge s. We then test the validity of our measure by determining how strongly the scores correlate with other variables, some of which are expected to be re lated to prestige, others of which should be unrelated. Finally, we incorpo rate our measure into an analysis of judicial influence, asking whether nov el legal rules are more likely to be adopted by other circuits if announced by highly esteemed judges than if announced by less prestigious ones. The evidence suggests that our measure is valid and that prestige can translate into influence.