The Partisan Dynamics of Supreme Court Confirmation Voting

Abstract

A sizable literature has explored the growth of partisan polarization in Congress and its impact on legislative behavior. Using this lens, we provide empirical analysis of the role of parties in more than seven decades of Supreme Court confirmation voting and offer several original findings. First, we offer new evidence that the strength of the president's party in the state's electorate has significantly and increasingly affected senators' votes. We also find that, since the mid-1980s, partisanship and ideology have become dominant influences in confirmation voting, while nominee qualifications and presidential strength have declined in importance. Finally, our evidence shows that polarization has more strongly affected opposite-party senators and Republican senators, who have become much more inclined to unite against the judicial nominees of presidents belonging to the other party. We hope these findings contribute to a much-needed dialogue between the judicial politics and congressional behavior literatures and encourage a stronger scholarly focus on interbranch partisan strategies.