The Department of Economics is pleased to invite you to a Micro seminar with Giovanni Facchini, University of Nottingham.
The election of law enforcement and judicial officials is a distinctive feature of American democracy. Yet, the democratic promise of elected justice sits uneasily alongside enduring racial disparities in the justice system. By compiling the most comprehensive dataset to date, covering all counties in the eleven former Confederate states from 1960 to 2024, we explore to what extent Blacks have closed their historical representation gap in the justice system. Using variation in federal oversight of local voting laws, we provide evidence on the effect of constraints on descriptive representation, emphasizing voter preferences, candidate supply, and mobilization. Early gains were limited by weak professional pipelines restricting candidate supply. Over time, as constraints eased and civil rights organizations intensified mobilization, Black representation increased substantially, particularly following the Black Lives Matter movement. Our findings highlight how political institutions, structural constraints, and organized mobilization jointly shape trajectories of Black representation in the justice system.