“…Much has been written by scholars of American politics about US Supreme Court confirmation battles, but the literature on lower federal court confirmation fights is relatively less bountiful. However, during the past two decades, presidential, legislative, and public law scholars have increasingly focused on the lower court confirmation process (e.g., Allison 1996; Basinger and Mak 2010; Goldman 1993; Hartley and Holmes 1997; Hartley and Holmes 2002; Primo, Binder, and Maltzman 2008; Scherer, Bartels, and Steigerwalt 2008; Sollenberger 2010). A review of the recent literature reveals that there are more survey reports (e.g., Goldman, Slotnick, and Schiavoni 2011), law review articles (e.g., Brand 2010; Tobias 2010), and opinion pieces (e.g., Bendery 2011) than more complex quantitative analyses of lower-court confirmation fights.…”