The text carefully reviews the three central counts on which judicial elections have been faulted: lowering the quality of the bench, impairing judicial independence, and failing to secure judicial accountability. It then concentrates on the analysis of empirical evidence to evaluate judicial elections as mechanisms of accountability, examining all the statewide partisan and nonpartisan elections for State supreme court justices in non-Southern States from 1948 to 1974. A detailed investigation of voter participation, electoral competition, the behavior of judicial electorates, and the patterns of gubernatorial vacancy appointments is presented. An analysis of decisionmaking on eight State supreme courts -- Indiana, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, Utah, Washington, Iowa, and Kansas -- also tests the relationship between different selection systems and judicial behavior. It is concluded that partisan elections maximize voter participation, meaningfully structure voter choices, minimize accession to the bench by appointment, and allow popular control over gubernatorial appointments. Additional evidence on the extent of partisan voting by judges selected under different methods leads to the conclusion that partisan methods are superior to both nonpartisan elections and nonelective selection methods as instruments of accountability. Thirty-six tables are included. Two appendixes contain the percentage distribution of nonunanimous cases in selected States by issue area and scale coefficients. Notes are provided for each chapter, and a bibliography of about 200 citations is appended. (Author abstract modified)