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

Overby, L. Marvin; Henschen, Beth M.; Strauss, Julie; Walsh, Michael H.

doi:10.2307/448860

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Overby et al (1992) find support for this in the context of the nomination of Clarence Thomas; senators from states with higher percentages of African Americans were more likely to vote for his confirmation than those from states with fewer African Americans. However, in the context of the nominations of Thurgood Marshall and Sonia Sotomayor, Overby et al (1994) and Steigerwalt, Vining, and Stricko (2013) find no evidence that percentages of African Americans or Latinos in their state influenced senators’ confirmation vote. However, both sets of authors suggest that the unique context of each nomination may explain their findings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Someone like Me: Descriptive Representation and Support for Supreme Court Nominees

Badas

Stauffer

2017

Political Research Quarterly

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Extant research on public support for judicial nominees finds that ideological congruence with the nominee is the most important factor in an individual’s decision to support a nominee. The research presented in this article develops the theory that for individuals from underrepresented groups, a shared descriptive identity with the nominee will moderate the negative effect of ideological distance. We test our theory using the nominations of Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. Furthermore, we conduct placebo tests to determine whether the effect of ideology is moderated for underrepresented groups when a shared descriptive identity is not present. We find that in the context of the Thomas nomination, a shared racial identity led to increased support for Thomas among liberal African Americans. We find similar effects in the case of Kagan and conservative women. In the case of Sotomayor, we find that a shared ethnic identity led to increased support among conservative Latinos, regardless of gender. We conclude by discussing the implications our findings have for descriptive representation and presidential selection of judicial nominees.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Someone like Me: Descriptive Representation and Support for Supreme Court Nominees

Badas

Stauffer

2017

Political Research Quarterly

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“…Scores of previous studies have explored the confirmation process for Supreme Court justices (for example, Baum 1995;Maltese 1995;Overby et al 1994;Silverstein 1994;Abraham 1991). Fewer studies have focused on the lower federal courts, in large part because of the perception that nearly all lower, federal court nominees are confirmed.…”

Section: The Unique Nature Of Judicial Confirmationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Senatorial Discourtesy: The Senate's Use of Delay to Shape the Federal Judiciary

Bell

2002

Political Research Quarterly

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Legislators have long recognized that delaying tactics are powerful tools for preventing the passage of laws they deem unsatisfactory. Because the U.S. Congress has several deadlines built into its session, when committee chairmen or individual members delay the scheduling of hearings, markups, or executive business meetings, it can have a devastating effect on pending legislation. The tactic of delay is now being used by the Senate Judiciary Committee and individual senators to stall confirmation of the President's judicial nominations. Since 1996, the average length of time between an individuals nomination to serve as a federal judge and the time that he or she is confirmed has increased dramatically At the same time, some nominations still proceed very quickly through the confirmation process. This article explores the question of why some nominees are subjected to lengthy delays, while others move through the Senate confirmation process in a matter of days. Specifically, it explores the impact of divided government, institutional strength of the President, and the majority party in the Senate, the position to which an individual has been nominated, and a number of nominee-specific variables to assess the impact that these have on the length of time a nominee will wait for confirmation.

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“…In other work, they find that the percent African American in the State was negatively related to the chances a Senator would vote in favor of confirming Justice Marshall. This finding led them to conclude that it is not the geographic constituency per se but the reelection constituency that is critical to Senator voting behavior on Supreme Court nominations (Overby et al 1994). 2.…”

Section: Fundingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, since justices enjoy life tenure, the nomination and confirmation period is the only real opportunity for elected representatives and the general public to influence the Court's composition. And given that home-state public opinion, particularly public opinion among core reelection constituencies, significantly influences Senators' confirmation votes (Kastellec, Lax, & Phillips, 2010;Overby & Brown, 1997;Overby et al, 1994), 1 it seems reasonable to expect the media to inform the public about, among other things, the nominees' known stances on the issues of public policy that they will confront if confirmed.…”

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confidence: 99%

Perpetuating the Myth of the Culture War Court? Issue Attention in Newspaper Coverage of U.S. Supreme Court Nominations

Evans

Pearson‐Merkowitz

2012

American Politics Research

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Using digital text analysis methods, we analyze over 3800 newspaper articles covering U.S. Supreme Court judicial appointments between 1981 and 2009 to measure the level of (in)congruence between the Court's agenda and the issues emphasized by the media. We find that newspapers highlight "culture war" issues at the expense of other important issues addressed much more frequently by the Court. Moreover, abortion in particular receives attention in more articles and in much greater depth than any other issue. With a few minor deviations, these patterns are consistent across nominations. These findings raise normative concerns regarding the didactic function of the print media in American democracy and shed empirical light on positive theories of media behavior.

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

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Someone like Me: Descriptive Representation and Support for Supreme Court Nominees

Someone like Me: Descriptive Representation and Support for Supreme Court Nominees

Senatorial Discourtesy: The Senate's Use of Delay to Shape the Federal Judiciary

Perpetuating the Myth of the Culture War Court? Issue Attention in Newspaper Coverage of U.S. Supreme Court Nominations

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