I investigate appointment to the Court of Appeal and House of Lords between 1880 and 2005. Exploiting the fact that appointment is invariably from within the ranks of existing High Court judges and using a conditional logit model, I test for effects of legal, professional, and political factors
upon appointment prospects. Although there is no advantage to having the
same political affiliation as the appointing Lord Chancellor, and although
there are no differences in the importance of the above factors for different
parties, judges are more likely to be promoted if they were previously ap-
pointed by the incumbent party.
