The Changing Politics of Federal Judicial Nominations

The Political Determinants of Ambassadorial Appointments

“…Knowing this, presidents 13. The literature on judicial nominations has some related empirical findings, with highly competent nominees experiencing higher probabilities of confirmation and shorter periods of legislative delay (e.g., Basinger and Mak 2010;Cameron, Cover, and Segal 1990;Epstein et al 2006;Shipan and Shannon 2003). will avoid putting forth patronage nominees in the first place. 14 The result will be more Foreign Service ambassadors appointed during times of president-Senate divergence.…”

The Confirmation Obstacle Course: Signaling Opposition through Delay

“…Starting with the 104th Congress, lengthier delays were experienced by district and circuit court nominees even after the committee had finished its work. Basinger and Mak (2010) have as well noted that confirmation delay can occur at the two distinct phases in the confirmation process, and that partisan politics and obstructionist tactics may operate differently in the two phases. However, in their assessment of confirmation delay, Basinger and Mak did not take advantage of examining delay at the committee stage separately from delay at the full Senate stage.…”

“…3 We considered using both the divided government measure and the ideological distance measure in each model, but high collinearity concerns prevented us from including both variables in the models. While contemplating using a divided government measure, we also accounted for two party unity variables (majority and minority) and their interactions with the divided government measure similarly as Basinger and Mak (2010) did, but those models were problematic due to high collinearity between the two party unity variables. 5 Following Martinek et al (2002), we excluded nominees from Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands.…”

“…These studies have included consideration of divided government (Bell 2002b;Binder and Maltzman 2002;Scherer et al 2008;Sollenberger 2010), the size of the opposing party's delegation in the Senate (Nixon and Goss 2001), the ideological distance between the president and a key member of the Senate (Basinger and Mak 2010;Binder andMaltzman 2002, 2009;Primo et al 2008;Scherer et al 2008), and the proportion of opposing-party members on the Judiciary Committee (Martinek et al 2002). Previous descriptive analyses have found that most of the delay seen in the modern confirmation process occurs at the committee stage (Goldman 2003;Goldman et al 2011;Slotnick and Goldman 1998), and that the Judiciary Committee chair is particularly important in determining the extent of delay imposed by the committee (Scherer 2005).…”

Lower Federal Court Judicial Confirmation Fights: A Critical Review of the Empirical Literature and Future Research Directions

“…Much has been written by scholars of American politics about US Supreme Court confirmation battles, but the literature on lower federal court confirmation fights is relatively less bountiful. However, during the past two decades, presidential, legislative, and public law scholars have increasingly focused on the lower court confirmation process (e.g., Allison 1996; Basinger and Mak 2010; Goldman 1993; Hartley and Holmes 1997; Hartley and Holmes 2002; Primo, Binder, and Maltzman 2008; Scherer, Bartels, and Steigerwalt 2008; Sollenberger 2010). A review of the recent literature reveals that there are more survey reports (e.g., Goldman, Slotnick, and Schiavoni 2011), law review articles (e.g., Brand 2010; Tobias 2010), and opinion pieces (e.g., Bendery 2011) than more complex quantitative analyses of lower-court confirmation fights.…”