The Changing Politics of Federal Judicial Nominations

Abstract

During recent decades, legislative politics in Congress has grown increasingly partisan, while nominations to federal judgeships have experienced increasing delays. How are these two trends related? Does the growing obstruction of nominations reveal a systemic change in how the Senate conducts the confirmation process, or does it reveal a change in nominees' characteristics? We find that the importance of ideological and partisan conflict is variable across levels of lower courts, and that it has grown over time as the political parties have become more internally cohesive and more polarized. In particular, we demonstrate that the effect of divided partisan control intensifies as party unity in the Senate rises.