Keeping Appointments: The Politics of Confirming United States Attorneys

Nelson, Michael J.; Ostrander, Ian

doi:10.1080/0098261x.2015.1125820

Cited by 10 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Much of the research on the time that it takes to fill court vacancies focuses on the time between a presidential nomination and eventual Senate confirmation. Deliberate delay of executive nominations in the Senate has been well documented in all manner of judicial (Bell 2002;Binder and Maltzman 2002;2009;Hendershot 2010;Martinek, Kemper, and Van Winkle 2002;Nelson and Ostrander 2016) as well as bureaucratic (Bond, Fleisher, and Krutz 2009;McCarty and Razaghian 1999;O'Connell 2009;Ostrander 2016) appointments. Pure delay may seem innocuous, but it can often lead to failure (Bond, Fleisher, and Krutz 2009) while at the same time exacerbating "emergency vacancies" in courts in which there are too few judges on the bench to reasonably meet the demand of filings (Wheeler and Binder 2011).…”

Section: Politics and Judicial Nominationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prioritizing Judicial Nominations after Presidential Transitions

King¹,

Ostrander²

2020

Pres Stud Q

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New presidents now commonly inherit a backlog of judicial vacancies. Lifetime judicial appointments provide presidents with lasting policy influence, but time and energy are rarely more valuable than after transitions while the selection and vetting of new judicial nominations are costly. Attempting to alter the ideological character of the courts could yield opposition that further increases the cost of each nomination. How then do new presidents prioritize vacancies? We use a unique data set of all district court vacancies that exist at the start of a new presidency to investigate. We find significant variation in the time to nominate within administrations and that presidents tend to prioritize necessity and expediency when filling transition vacancies.

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Section: Politics and Judicial Nominationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prioritizing Judicial Nominations after Presidential Transitions

King¹,

Ostrander²

2020

Pres Stud Q

Self Cite

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“…Together, the president and Congress nominate and appoint U.S. Attorneys, frequently seeking to control the bureaucracy through “politicized” appointments (Lewis 2008; Miller 2000; Nelson and Ostrander 2016). As a result, many of the selected U.S.…”

Section: Political Constraints On the Decision To Prosecutementioning

confidence: 99%

“…While prosecutors may adamantly assert their decision-making independence, as political scientists, we have good reason to believe that political factors systematically affect the decisions of prosecutors to charge crimes. Prosecutors in the United States are selected through a political process (elections or appointments; Goelzhauser 2013; Nelson 2014; Nelson and Ostrander 2016; Scott 2007). They generally operate within the purview of the executive branch.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Responsiveness of Violent Crime Prosecution

Boldt

Boyd

2018

Political Research Quarterly

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Is a federal prosecutor’s decision whether to pursue violent crime charges political? While prosecutors frequently assert their decision-making independence, their selection and operational constraints suggest a very different story. We assess whether political factors related to the prosecution priorities of the president, Congress, and the local public affect federal prosecutors’ decisions to pursue or decline charges in violent crime matters. To empirically examine this, we utilize data from 89 U.S. Attorneys offices from 1996 to 2011. The results provide rich new insight into when and why federal prosecutors’ decisions to pursue or decline prosecutions are driven by the preferences of the president, Congress, and the local public. The findings also have important broader implications for the role of political factors in a U.S. criminal justice system believed by many to be in crisis.

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“…New presidents are inaugurated in late January, and it sometimes takes months to nominate new prosecutors. More than 20% of nominations linger over 100 days in the Senate, and some last more than 600 days; 15% of nominees are ultimately rejected, requiring the process to start again (Nelson and Ostrander , 18–19). Until 1986, district court judges appointed interim prosecutors to serve until a nominee was confirmed, and these courts still do so if a confirmation takes more than 120 days (Nelson and Ostrander , 7).…”

Section: Data and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More than 20% of nominations linger over 100 days in the Senate, and some last more than 600 days; 15% of nominees are ultimately rejected, requiring the process to start again (Nelson and Ostrander , 18–19). Until 1986, district court judges appointed interim prosecutors to serve until a nominee was confirmed, and these courts still do so if a confirmation takes more than 120 days (Nelson and Ostrander , 7). Even if the president were able to instantly appoint every prosecutor and immediately communicate all of his policy preferences to those prosecutors, the behavior of these prosecutors would still have a delayed effect on incarceration because federal criminal cases often last several months or longer.…”

Section: Data and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Macro Implementation: Testing the Causal Paths from U.S. Macro Policy to Federal Incarceration

Hall

2016

American J Political Sci

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Policy implementation is usually studied at the micro level by testing the short-term effects of a specific policy on the behavior of government actors and policy outcomes. This study adopts an alternative approach by examining macro implementation-the cumulative effect of aggregate public policies over time. I employ a variety of methodological techniques to test the influence of macro criminal justice policy on new admissions to federal prison via three mediators: case filings by federal prosecutors, conviction rates in federal district courts, and plea bargaining behavior. I find that cumulative Supreme Court rulings influence the incarceration rate by altering conviction rates in district courts; however, I find only mixed evidence of congressional and presidential influence. The results suggest that U.S. macro policy influences bureaucratic outputs by altering the behavior of subordinate policy implementers; however, the Supreme Court may enjoy an advantage in shaping criminal justice policy.

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Keeping Appointments: The Politics of Confirming United States Attorneys

Cited by 10 publications

References 31 publications

Prioritizing Judicial Nominations after Presidential Transitions

Prioritizing Judicial Nominations after Presidential Transitions

The Political Responsiveness of Violent Crime Prosecution

Macro Implementation: Testing the Causal Paths from U.S. Macro Policy to Federal Incarceration

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