- The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics
- The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Judicial Behavior
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Appointing Federal Judges
- Appointing Supreme Court Justices
- Judicial Elections: Judges and their “New-Style” Constituencies
- Federal Judicial Tenure
- Law Clerks
- Gatekeeping and Filtering in Trial Courts
- Access to Intermediate Appellate Courts
- Agenda-Setting on the U.S. Supreme Court
- Courtroom Proceedings in U.S. Federal Courts
- Opinion Writing
- Vertical <i>Stare Decisis</i>
- Law in Judicial Decision-Making
- The Strategic Analysis of Judicial Behavior and the Separation of Powers
- Judicial Review
- The Role of Personal Attributes and Social Backgrounds on Judging
- Ideology and Partisanship
- The Economic Analysis of Judicial Behavior
- Judges and their Audiences
- Interest Groups and the Judiciary
- The Relationship between Courts and Legislatures
- Courts and Executives
- Covering the Courts
- The Supreme Court and Public Opinion
- Judicial Impact
- Cognition in the Courts: Analyzing the Use of Experiments to Study Legal Decision-Making
- New Measurement Technologies: A Review and Application to Nuremberg and Justice Jackson
- The Use of Observational Data to Study Law and the Judiciary
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter assesses the literature on Supreme Court appointments and considers directions for future research. Early work on appointments tended to be in the form of broad political histories or more narrow historical accounts of individual appointments. But as the field developed, much of the work on appointments centered on the confirmation process, including the determinants of senators’ confirmation votes and presidents’ success in getting their Supreme Court nominees confirmed. Was this success due to congressional deference to the president’s appointment power? Or, did presidents’ success result from an active and anticipatory selection stage in which presidents strategically consulted with members of Congress in order to pave the way toward a smooth confirmation? To answer these questions, recent work on appointments has focused on the selection stage. The evidence seems to support the latter—presidents anticipate problems and work with members to garner support for a confirmable nominee.
Keywords: Supreme Court appointments, nominees, selection, confirmation, selection stage, confirmation stage
Christine L. Nemacheck is Associate Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary.
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- The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics
- The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Judicial Behavior
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Appointing Federal Judges
- Appointing Supreme Court Justices
- Judicial Elections: Judges and their “New-Style” Constituencies
- Federal Judicial Tenure
- Law Clerks
- Gatekeeping and Filtering in Trial Courts
- Access to Intermediate Appellate Courts
- Agenda-Setting on the U.S. Supreme Court
- Courtroom Proceedings in U.S. Federal Courts
- Opinion Writing
- Vertical <i>Stare Decisis</i>
- Law in Judicial Decision-Making
- The Strategic Analysis of Judicial Behavior and the Separation of Powers
- Judicial Review
- The Role of Personal Attributes and Social Backgrounds on Judging
- Ideology and Partisanship
- The Economic Analysis of Judicial Behavior
- Judges and their Audiences
- Interest Groups and the Judiciary
- The Relationship between Courts and Legislatures
- Courts and Executives
- Covering the Courts
- The Supreme Court and Public Opinion
- Judicial Impact
- Cognition in the Courts: Analyzing the Use of Experiments to Study Legal Decision-Making
- New Measurement Technologies: A Review and Application to Nuremberg and Justice Jackson
- The Use of Observational Data to Study Law and the Judiciary
- Index