Principals and Prosecutors: US Attorneys and the Enforcement of Criminal Policy

Presented at the Annual Meeting American Political Science Association

As gridlock continues to impede the ability of the federal government to make policy, important policy-relevant decisions are now carried out entirely within the executive branch. As the federal government's principal litigators, United States Attorneys occupy a central role in the judicial system and in the execution of federal criminal policy by administ rations. Here we explore how these actors carry out policy directives from Washington. More specifically, they operate as agents of multiple principals including actors in the Department of Justice, the U.S. Congress, and the courts. In this paper, we examine data on criminal referrals, prosecutions, and convictions over a twenty-five year period to probe how factors such as district-level demographic characteristics, ideological predilections, and variations in office size may influence the behavior of U.S. Attorneys. We find that both ideological and district-specific factors work to condition the behavior of U.S. Attorneys during this time frame.