Senate Confirmation of Appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court

Palmer, J. Foster

doi:10.1080/00346768300000017

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…We also include the age of the nominee as an independent variable (Palmer 1983). Because appointments to the Court are lifetime appointments, it is conceivable that a younger nominee, who might have a long tenure on the Court, will come under greater scrutiny than an older nominee.…”

Section: Hypotheses and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Delaying Justice(s): A Duration Analysis of Supreme Court Confirmations

Shipan

Shannon

2003

American J Political Sci

101

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Presidents traditionally have had great success when nominating justices to the Supreme Court, with confirmation being the norm and rejection being the rare exception. While the confirmation process usually ends with the nominee taking a seat on the Court, however, there is a great deal of variance in the amount of time it takes the Senate to act. To derive a theoretical explanation of this underlying dynamic in the confirmation process, we draw on a spatial model of presidential nominations to the Court. We then employ a hazard model to test this explanation, using data on all Supreme Court nominations and confirmations since the end of the Civil War. Our primary finding is that the duration of the confirmation process increases as the ideological distance between the president and the Senate increases. We also find evidence that suggests that the duration increases for critical nominees and chief justices and decreases for older nominees, current and previous senators, and nominees with prior experience on state and federal district courts.

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Section: Hypotheses and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Delaying Justice(s): A Duration Analysis of Supreme Court Confirmations

Shipan

Shannon

2003

American J Political Sci

101

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“…Individual votes of senators have received scant attention, however. In contrast, nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court have attracted substantial attention, with analyses of both confirmation vote outcomes (Massaro 1990;Palmer 1983;Ruckman 1993;Scigliano 1971;Segal 1987) and the votes of individual senators (Cameron, Cover, and Segal 1990;Felice andWeisberg 1988-1989;Overby, Henschen, Walsh, and Strauss 1992;Segal, Cameron, and Cover 1992;Songer 1979). No doubt this disparity is a product of the differing levels of controversy concerning the two positions.…”

Section: Senators' Goals and Confirmation Votingmentioning

confidence: 86%

Roll Call Votes on Cabinet Confirmations

King

Riddeesperger

2006

Congress & the Presidency

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“…These studies have examined such factors as the partisan balance of power in the Senate (see, e.g., Halper 1972), the relative strength of the president making the nomination (see, e.g., Scigliano 1971: 97-99;Palmer 1983;Segal and Spaeth 1986;Segal 1987), and even the relative popularity of the Court itself during nomination fights (see, e.g., Schmidhauser and Berg 1972;Halper 1972: 111-12).…”

Section: African-americanmentioning

confidence: 99%

African-American Constituents and Supreme Court Nominees: An Examination of the Senate Confirmation of Thurgood Marshall

Overby

Henschen

Strauss³

et al. 1994

Political Research Quarterly

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In this study we extend previous research on the impact of constituency preferences on the roll-call behavior of senators during Supreme Court confirmations by examining the 1967 vote on Thurgood Marshall. In contrast to the later case of Clarence Thomas, we find that constituent racial characteristics (as measured by African-American percentage of state population) had a significant negative impact in the Marshall case. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications of these findings, and what they illuminate about the changing nature of the Southern Democratic coalition.Recent research on the Senate confirmation of Supreme Court nominees has suggested that constituency concerns can exert a substantial influence on senators' voting behavior In an earlier work (Overby, Henschen, Walsh, and Strauss 1992), we tested the impact of constituency preferences on senators' roll-call behavior in the recent case of Clarence Thomas, concluding that state African-American constituency size and reelectoral proximity were positively and significantly related to the probability of a &dquo;yes&dquo; vote. Here, we compare the Thomas vote with Senate action on the earlier Supreme Court nomination of Thurgood Marshall, a case that reflects similar constituency concerns. Our findings demonstrate not only the relevance of constituency preferences in the Marshall vote, but in comparison with the Thomas case speak to the changing demographics of Southern politics.

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Senate Confirmation of Appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court

Cited by 14 publications

References 13 publications

Delaying Justice(s): A Duration Analysis of Supreme Court Confirmations

Delaying Justice(s): A Duration Analysis of Supreme Court Confirmations

Roll Call Votes on Cabinet Confirmations

African-American Constituents and Supreme Court Nominees: An Examination of the Senate Confirmation of Thurgood Marshall

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