Replication Data for: Selecting Chief Justices by Peer Vote

What characteristics do state supreme court justices prioritize when choosing chiefs? At the federal level, collegial court chiefs are appointed or rotated. A plurality of states permit selection by peer vote, but the institutional consequences of this selection mechanism are not well known. We develop a theory of chief justice selection emphasizing experience, bias, and politics. Leveraging within-contest variation and more than a half century's worth of original data, we find that peer votes often default to a seniority rotation norm. Justices who dissent more relative to their peers, however, are disadvantaged. We find little evidence that political dynamics otherwise drive these decisions and no evidence of discrimination against women or people of color. The results have implications for our understanding of institutional performance and broader debates about political leader selection.