Here's something that Howard Bashman, among others, will probably find interesting. Ahmed Taha of the Wake Forest Univ. School of Law has an article coming out in the American Economic Review (the premier economics journal in the U.S.). He analyzes the factors that lead district courts to publish their opinions, as opposed to leaving them unpublished:

These analyses find that, all else equal, judges who held prior political positions, who received higher ABA ratings, who had lower caseloads, who had longer tenures, who struck down the guidelines, or who had a greater chance of promotion to a U.S. Court of Appeals were more likely to publish their decisions.

Note that Taha thanks the ubiquitous Richard Posner in the first footnote for reviewing the article. (Posner shows up in the first footnote of law review articles more often than just about anybody.)