From Genteel Pluralism to Hyper-Pluralism: Interest Groups and Supreme Court Nominations, 1930-2017

Cameron, Charles M.; Gray, Cody; Kastellec, Jonathan P.; Park, Jee-Kwang

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3087987

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 47 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Finally, Figure 3 depicts the number of interest groups that mobilized in every Supreme Court nomination between 1930 and 2020. (This measure is also based on coverage in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times —see Cameron et al (2020) for more details.) As with newspaper coverage, we see a sharp rise in interest group mobilization for Supreme Court nominations beginning around 1970.…”

Section: The Evolution Of Supreme Court Nominations and The Prospects...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on existing research on nominations, we know the following. With some notable exceptions (such as labor groups during the nomination of John Parker), the small number of interest groups that existed in this period showed little appetite for getting involved in nomination politics (Scherer, 2005; Cameron et al, 2020). In turn, the parties and presidents had relatively low interest in the policy outputs of the Court (Yalof, 2001; Cameron et al, 2019)—again, there were a few exceptions, such as Southern Democrats’ fury at the Court following Brown v. Board of Education (1954).…”

Section: The Evolution Of Supreme Court Nominations and The Prospects...mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The politics of accountability in Supreme Court nominations: voter recall and assessment of senator votes on nominees

Bass¹,

Cameron

Kastellec

2022

PSRM

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While longstanding theories of political behavior argue that voters do not possess sufficient political knowledge to hold their elected representatives accountable, recent revisionist studies challenge this view, arguing that voters can both follow how their representatives vote and use that information intelligently. We apply the revisionist account to the study of Supreme Court nominations in the modern era. Using survey data on the nominations of Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, we ask whether voters can and do hold senators accountable for their votes on Supreme Court nominees. While our results for Thomas are ambiguous, we find strong evidence for accountability in the cases of Sotomayor and Kagan. In particular, we show that voters on average can correctly recall the votes of their senators on these nominees, and that correct recall is correlated with higher levels of education and political knowledge. We then show that voters are more likely to both approve of and vote to re-elect their senator if he or she casts a vote on Sotomayor and Kagan that is in line with voters’ preferences. Finally, we show this effect is quite sizable, as it rivals the effect of agreement on other high-profile roll call votes. These results have important implications for both the broader study of representation and for understanding the current politics of Supreme Court nominations.

show abstract

Section: The Evolution Of Supreme Court Nominations and The Prospects...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Evolution Of Supreme Court Nominations and The Prospects...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of accountability in Supreme Court nominations: voter recall and assessment of senator votes on nominees

Bass¹,

Cameron

Kastellec

2022

PSRM

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…During the pre-nomination stage interest groups often provide their input on ideal nominees (Bell, 2002; Caldeira et al, 2003; Scherer et al, 2008; Steigerwalt, 2010). Cues from interest groups and colleagues are commonplace in Congress and are used to inform everything from their votes on the floor to the questions they ask in committee hearings (Baumgartner & Leech, 1998; Box-Steffensmeier et al, 2019; Cameron et al, 2020; Curry, 2015; Krutz, 2005; Lorenz, 2020). Confirmation procedure varies depending on the level of the judiciary.…”

Section: Weaponizing Intersecting Influence: Interest Groups and Proc...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Going Nuclear: Federalist Society Affiliated Judicial Nominees’ Prospects and a New Era of Confirmation Politics¹

Bird

McGee

2022

American Politics Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Significant changes to the federal judicial confirmation process have manifested over the past decade, including multiple procedural reforms in the United States Senate. We argue the “nuclear option,” the reduction of the vote-threshold required to proceed to a final confirmation vote on judicial nominees (i.e., to invoke cloture) from three-fifths to a simple majority, contributed to a renewed escalation of partisan confirmation battles on which the Federalist Society capitalized. Pundits and politicians alike show growing concern about the role of interest groups, especially those associated with the conservative legal movement, in judicial nominations. The intersection of these two sets of changes raises questions about the contemporary judicial nominations process. Utilizing a novel dataset of Federalist Society (FedSoc) affiliates drawn from event listings (1993–2020), we analyze the interactive role of FedSoc affiliation with Senate procedural changes to the judicial confirmation process. We find affiliation with the Federalist Society, after the initial nuclear option was implemented, increases the probability of a circuit court nominee’s confirmation by approximately 20%.

show abstract

“…We argue that in the contemporary era citizens increasingly use political criteria rather than apolitical criteria to evaluate judicial nominees. We posit that the increasing polarization of American national politics and the subsequent politicization of judicial selection, especially for nominations to the Supreme Court, have changed messaging strategies by parties and interest groups to focus more on political and cultural issues (e.g., Cameron, et al, 2020). Rather than focusing primarily on professional merit or the president’s prerogatives as the chief executive, proponents of the nominee often focus their messaging on a nominee’s ideological leanings and likely consequences for in-group political goals.…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, we are able to test whether popular evaluations of Supreme Court nominees have changed since the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. The decades between have been marked by increased politicization of Supreme Court nominations (Rogowski & Stone, 2021) and a greater tendency among elites to feature ideological and cultural arguments to support or oppose confirmation (Cameron et al, 2020). We hypothesize that during the modern, polarized era both supporters and opponents rely on ideological and issue-based justifications for their preferences about Supreme Court nominees.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Change and Continuity in Citizens’ Evaluations of Supreme Court Nominees

Vining

Bitecofer

2022

American Politics Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the 1980 and 1990’s, supporters of Supreme Court nominees tended to characterize their views in non-ideological terms while opponents relied more on ideological justifications. Since then, the judicial appointment process has been increasingly entangled with partisan conflict. Given the heightened focus on nominees’ ideological preferences, we expect that citizens are now more likely to rely on political over non-political justifications, even if they support the nominee. We use data from a telephone survey in 2017 after the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to test this proposition. We find that contemporary citizens rely more frequently on political justifications for their support of nominees than then they did in the Reagan-Bush era. Opponents remain more likely to invoke political orientations, but the disparity has declined. The findings reveal both change and continuity in citizens’ evaluations of Supreme Court nominees.

show abstract

From Genteel Pluralism to Hyper-Pluralism: Interest Groups and Supreme Court Nominations, 1930-2017

Cited by 4 publications

References 47 publications

The politics of accountability in Supreme Court nominations: voter recall and assessment of senator votes on nominees

The politics of accountability in Supreme Court nominations: voter recall and assessment of senator votes on nominees

Going Nuclear: Federalist Society Affiliated Judicial Nominees’ Prospects and a New Era of Confirmation Politics¹

Change and Continuity in Citizens’ Evaluations of Supreme Court Nominees

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

From Genteel Pluralism to Hyper-Pluralism: Interest Groups and Supreme Court Nominations, 1930-2017

Cited by 4 publications

References 47 publications

The politics of accountability in Supreme Court nominations: voter recall and assessment of senator votes on nominees

The politics of accountability in Supreme Court nominations: voter recall and assessment of senator votes on nominees

Going Nuclear: Federalist Society Affiliated Judicial Nominees’ Prospects and a New Era of Confirmation Politics1

Change and Continuity in Citizens’ Evaluations of Supreme Court Nominees

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Going Nuclear: Federalist Society Affiliated Judicial Nominees’ Prospects and a New Era of Confirmation Politics¹