The Selling Of Supreme Court Nominees

Author : John Anthony Maltese
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801858833
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Selling of Supreme Court Nominees written by John Anthony Maltese and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1998-04-24 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Selling of Supreme Court Nominees, Maltese traces the evolution of the contentious and controversial confirmation process awaiting today's nominees to the nation's highest court. His story begins in the second half of the nineteenth century, when social and technological changes led to the rise of organized interest groups. Despite occasional victories, Maltese explains, structural factors limited the influence of such groups well into this century. Until 1913, senators were not popularly elected but chosen by state legislatures, undermining the potent threat of electoral retaliation that interest groups now enjoy. And until Senate rules changed in 1929, consideration of Supreme Court nominees took place in almost absolute secrecy. Floor debates and the final Senate vote usually took place in executive session. Even if interest groups could retaliate against senators, they often did not know whom to retaliate against.

Author : Michael Comiskey
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Seeking Justices written by Michael Comiskey and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the long shadows cast by the Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas nominations, Supreme Court confirmations remain highly contentious and controversial. This is due in part to the Senate's increasing reliance upon a much lengthier, much more public, and occasionally raucous confirmation process—in an effort to curb the potential excesses of executive power created by presidents seeking greater control over the Court's ideological composition. Michael Comiskey offers the most comprehensive, systematic, and optimistic analysis of that process to date. Arguing that the process works well and therefore should not be significantly altered, Comiskey convincingly counters those critics who view highly contentious confirmation proceedings as the norm. Senators have every right and a real obligation, he contends, to scrutinize the nominees' constitutional philosophies. He further argues that the media coverage of the Senate's deliberations has worked to improve the level of such scrutiny and that recent presidents have neither exerted excessive influence on the appointment process nor created a politically extreme Court. He also examines the ongoing concern over presidential efforts to pack the court, concluding that stacking the ideological deck is unlikely. As an exception to the rule, Comiskey analyzes in depth the Thomas confirmation to explain why it was an aberration, offering the most detailed account yet of Thomas's pre-judicial professional and political activities. He argues that the Senate Judiciary Committee abdicated its responsibilities out of deference to Thomas's race. Another of the book's unique features is Comiskey's reassessment of the reputations of twentieth-century Supreme Court justices. Based on a survey of nearly 300 scholars in constitutional law and politics, it shows that the modern confirmation process continues to fill Court vacancies with jurists as capable as those of earlier eras. We have now seen the longest period without a turnover on the Court since the early nineteenth century, making inevitable the appointment of several new justices following the 2004 presidential election. Thus, the timing of the publication of Seeking Justices could not be more propitious.

Author : David Alistair Yalof
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pursuit of Justices written by David Alistair Yalof and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : David Alistair Yalof
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226945460
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pursuit of Justices written by David Alistair Yalof and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-10-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yalof takes the reader behind the scenes of what happens before the Senate hearings to show how presidents decide who will sit on the highest court in the land. He draws on the papers of 7 modern presidents and firsthand interviews with key figures.

Author : Congressional Service
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781727354959
Total Pages : 42 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Questioning Judicial Nominees written by Congressional Service and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-09-14 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Constitution vests the Senate with the role of providing "advice" and affording or withholding "consent" when a President nominates a candidate to be an Article III judge-that is, a federal judge entitled to life tenure, such as a Supreme Court Justice. To carry out this "advice and consent" role, the Senate typically holds a hearing at which Members question the nominee. After conducting this hearing, the Senate generally either "consents" to the nomination by voting to confirm the nominee or instead rejects the nominee. Notably, many prior judicial nominees have refrained from answering certain questions during their confirmation hearings on the ground that responding to those questions would contravene norms of judicial ethics or the Constitution. Various "canons" of judicial conduct-that is, self-enforcing aspirational norms intended to promote the independence and integrity of the judiciary-may potentially discourage nominees from fully answering certain questions that Senators may pose to them in the confirmation context. However, although these canons squarely prohibit some forms of conduct during the judicial confirmation process-such as pledging to reach specified results in future cases if confirmed-it is less clear whether or to what extent the canons constrain judges from providing Senators with more general information regarding their jurisprudential views. As a result, disagreement exists regarding the extent to which applicable ethical rules prohibit nominees from answering certain questions. Beyond the judicial ethics rules, broader constitutional values, such as due process and the separation of powers, have informed the Senate's questioning of judicial nominees. As a result, historical practice can help illuminate which questions a judicial nominee may or should refuse to answer during his or her confirmation. Recent Supreme Court nominees, for instance, have invoked the so-called "Ginsburg Rule" to decline to discuss any cases that are currently pending before the Court or any issues that are likely to come before the Court. Senators and nominees have disagreed about whether any given response would improperly prejudge an issue that is likely to be contested at the Supreme Court. Although nominees have reached varied conclusions regarding which responses are permissible or impermissible, nominees have commonly answered general questions regarding their judicial philosophy, their prior statements, and judicial procedure. Nominees have been more hesitant, however, to answer specific questions about prior Supreme Court precedent, especially cases presenting issues that are likely to recur in the future. Ultimately, however, there are few available remedies when a nominee refuses to answer a particular question. Although a Senator may vote against a nominee who is not sufficiently forthcoming, as a matter of historical practice the Senate has rarely viewed lack of candor during confirmation hearings as disqualifying, and it does not appear that the Senate has ever rejected a Supreme Court nominee solely on the basis of evasiveness.

Author : Carl Hulse
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 006304059X
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Confirmation Bias written by Carl Hulse and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chief Washington Correspondent for the New York Times presents a richly detailed, news-breaking, and conversation-changing look at the unprecedented political fight to fill the Supreme Court seat made vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death—using it to explain the paralyzing and all but irreversible dysfunction across all three branches in the nation’s capital. The embodiment of American conservative thought and jurisprudence, Antonin Scalia cast an expansive shadow over the Supreme Court for three decades. His unexpected death in February 2016 created a vacancy that precipitated a pitched political fight. That battle would not only change the tilt of the court, but the course of American history. It would help decide a presidential election, fundamentally alter longstanding protocols of the United States Senate, and transform the Supreme Court—which has long held itself as a neutral arbiter above politics—into another branch of the federal government riven by partisanship. In an unprecedented move, the Republican-controlled Senate, led by majority leader, Mitch McConnell, refused to give Democratic President Barak Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, a confirmation hearing. Not one Republican in the Senate would meet with him. Scalia’s seat would be held open until Donald Trump’s nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch, was confirmed in April 2017. Carl Hulse has spent more than thirty years covering the machinations of the beltway. In Out of Order he tells the story of this history-making battle to control the Supreme Court through exclusive interviews with McConnell, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and other top officials, Trump campaign operatives, court activists, and legal scholars, as well as never-before-reported details and developments. Richly textured and deeply informative, Out of Order provides much-needed context, revisiting the judicial wars of the past two decades to show how those conflicts have led to our current polarization. He examines the politicization of the federal bench and the implications for public confidence in the courts, and takes us behind the scenes to explore how many long-held democratic norms and entrenched, bipartisan procedures have been erased across all three branches of government.

Author : Christopher L. Eisgruber
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400827825
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Next Justice written by Christopher L. Eisgruber and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Supreme Court appointments process is broken, and the timing couldn't be worse--for liberals or conservatives. The Court is just one more solid conservative justice away from an ideological sea change--a hard-right turn on an array of issues that affect every American, from abortion to environmental protection. But neither those who look at this prospect with pleasure nor those who view it with horror will be able to make informed judgments about the next nominee to the Court--unless the appointments process is fixed now. In The Next Justice, Christopher Eisgruber boldly proposes a way to do just that. He describes a new and better manner of deliberating about who should serve on the Court--an approach that puts the burden on nominees to show that their judicial philosophies and politics are acceptable to senators and citizens alike. And he makes a new case for the virtue of judicial moderates. Long on partisan rancor and short on serious discussion, today's appointments process reveals little about what kind of judge a nominee might make. Eisgruber argues that the solution is to investigate how nominees would answer a basic question about the Court's role: When and why is it beneficial for judges to trump the decisions of elected officials? Through an examination of the politics and history of the Court, Eisgruber demonstrates that pursuing this question would reveal far more about nominees than do other tactics, such as investigating their views of specific precedents or the framers' intentions. Written with great clarity and energy, The Next Justice provides a welcome exit from the uninformative political theater of the current appointments process.

Author : Dion Farganis
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472120271
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings in the U.S. Senate written by Dion Farganis and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2014-03-24 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critics claim that Supreme Court nominees have become more evasive in recent decades and that Senate confirmation hearings lack real substance. Conducting a line-by-line analysis of the confirmation hearing of every nominee since 1955—an original dataset of nearly 11,000 questions and answers from testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee—Dion Farganis and Justin Wedeking discover that nominees are far more forthcoming than generally assumed. Applying an original scoring system to assess each nominee’s testimony based on the same criteria, they show that some of the earliest nominees were actually less willing to answer questions than their contemporary counterparts. Factors such as changes in the political culture of Congress and the 1981 introduction of televised coverage of the hearings have created the impression that nominee candor is in decline. Further, senators’ votes are driven more by party and ideology than by a nominee’s responsiveness to their questions. Moreover, changes in the confirmation process intersect with increasing levels of party polarization as well as constituents’ more informed awareness and opinions of recent Supreme Court nominees.

Author : Christine L. Nemacheck
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Strategic Selection written by Christine L. Nemacheck and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Christine Nemacheck makes use of presidential papers to reconstruct the politics of nominee selection from Herbert Hoover's appointment of Charles Evan Hughes in 1930 through President George W. Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito in 2005. By revealing the pattern of strategic action, Nemacheck takes us a long way toward understanding this critically important part of the American political system.

Author : James A. Thorpe
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 54 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Appearance of Supreme Court Nominees Before the Senate Judiciary Committee written by James A. Thorpe and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: