Blurring institutional boundaries: Judges’ perceptions of threats tojudicial independence

The legislature wields multiple tools to limit judicial power, but scholars have little information about how judges interpret variant threats and which they find most concerning. To provide insight, we conduct original interviews regarding legislative threats to courts with over two dozen sitting federal judges, representing all tiers of the federal judiciary. We find thatjudges have a nuanced understanding of threats and tend to identify components oflegislative proposals that threaten formal institutional powers as more concerning than those challenging policy set by judges. This distinction has broad implications for our understanding of judicial behavior at the federal level.