Court Confirmation Hearings Research Articles

Introducing the Marginalized Image Navigation and Expression (MINE) principles via the confirmation hearings of judge Ketanji Brown Jackson

Image Restoration Theory (IRT) examines the strategies that people, especially public figures, and organizations use when they face image and reputational threats. Past scholarship has not fully accounted for the impact of identity on an individual or group’s ability to invoke image repair strategies. We examine the 2022 Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson through an intersectional lens to spotlight the constraints that minoritized populations, generally, and Black women, specifically, encounter when responding to reputational threats. Given the legacies of patriarchy and whiteness that operate in the West, Black women often lack the standing in the eyes of the public to defend themselves against attacks and accusations, an experience we describe as nonpersonhood. This point suggests that image repair strategies are not neutral, but embedded within socio-political and historical contexts. Via our analysis, we introduce Marginalized Image Navigation and Expression (MINE) principles as a conceptual framework that is useful for understanding the nuanced ways that images are navigated, negotiated, and expressed, especially for marginalized persons. Finally, we examine the implications of our arguments in the context of reputational threats against minoritized people and organizations.The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.Malcolm X

Gender, Race, and Interruptions at Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

In this research letter, we examine whether gender and racial bias affect interruption rates at one of the most visible events in American politics: US Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Using original data from 1939 to 2022, we find that male and white participants are more likely to interrupt women and person of color speakers, respectively, relative to male and white speakers. This finding holds for both senators and nominees as interrupters. Our results provide evidence that biased interruptive behavior occurs in even the most public and salient of political settings and that it can be mitigated (or intensified) by shared (or opposite) partisanship among speaking pairs. We also find interruption inequalities are not isolated to women as the interrupted, revealing that people of color in political and legal settings are subject to heightened rates of interruptions as well.

Analyzing the Rhetoric of Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

Abstract Supreme Court confirmation hearings place the often-reclusive institution in the public spotlight and afford members of the Senate Judiciary Committee the ability to pursue important personal and party goals. I construct and evaluate a measure of rhetorical sentiment that considers the positive and negative behaviors of committee members during Supreme Court confirmation hearings between 1971 and 2020. While some observers have pointed to the evolving dynamics of confirmation hearings as being the result of key inflection points, I find that these events alone do not explain rhetorical behaviors. Instead, my results suggest that rhetorical behaviors have been predominately mediated by structures of party control and the balance of interbranch political power since at least the 1970s. I conclude by noting how these behaviors can further deteriorate the public’s perceptions that the Court remains insulated from the contentious political environment.

Laughing All the Way to the Bench: The Role of Humor in Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

Laughing All the Way to the Bench: The Role of Humor in Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

It’s Not Personal: Politics and Policy in Lower Court Confirmation Hearings

It’s Not Personal: Politics and Policy in Lower Court Confirmation Hearings

Motivated Reasoning and Attitudes Towards Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings: Evidence from Five Nominations and an Experiment

Relying on theories of motivated reasoning, I hypothesize that individuals who favor a nominee will prefer a legalistic confirmation hearing, while those who oppose a nominee will prefer a politicized confirmation hearing. Analyzing survey data from five recent nominees and a survey experiment, I find support for this hypothesis. The results have implications for how the public interacts with the nature of the Court’s hybrid institutional structure. Specifically, I argue the results support the notion that the public engages in a political calculation when making judgements about the Court. When it serves their preferences, people will view the Court as a legalistic institution; however, when individuals believe there is an advantage in viewing the Court as a political institution, they are more likely to desire the Court to be evaluated in political ways.

Gender Backlash and the Moderating Role of Shared Racial Group Membership.

Research suggests that White women often experience more gender backlash than women of color in response to expressions of agency. We consider whether this differential in backlash is driven by the match or mismatch of the race of both perceivers and targets. Much of the existing work in this space examines the perspective of White perceivers, which might underestimate racial minority women's susceptibility to backlash if backlash occurs primarily in same-race interactions. We examine how the racial group memberships of targets and perceivers jointly affect backlash against gender-norm violating women. In analyses of Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford's accusations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh and Anita Hill's accusations against Clarence Thomas during their respective U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, an archival analysis of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and two experiments, we find that perceivers of different races tend to express more backlash toward racial in-group than out-group women.

Conscientiousness and Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee

Abstract This article examines how one personality trait of U.S. Supreme Court nominees influences the confirmation process in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Specifically, the article asks, are conscientious nominees more forthcoming when they answer Committee Members’ questions? And, second, are Committee Members, in turn, more or less likely to vote favorably for conscientious nominees? The paper builds a theory of how the conscientiousness trait shapes how nominees to the High Court interact with the Senate Judiciary Committee. To test our theory and answer the questions, we use confirmation hearing data starting from 1955 and extending through 2018, which includes both the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh hearings. We find that personality shapes interactions in the Senate judiciary committee in important and meaningful ways. Importantly, we find evidence that suggests a nominee's conscientiousness helps to explain why some Senators would be willing to vote for him or her even when that nominee might be less qualified.

MOBILIZING AND DEMOBILIZING

Abstract Since the 2016 US presidential campaign and the rise of the #MeToo movement, issues of sexual assault and harassment have risen to prominence. At the same time, these issues have also been understood and evaluated through the lens of partisanship. The US Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh exemplified these dynamics by providing clear partisan and emotion-laden cues to citizens. Given these events’ temporal proximity to the midterms, we argue that the confirmation hearings not only amplified an ongoing conversation, but also heightened the effect of sexist predispositions on turnout. Using a unique online survey with validated voter turnout in the 2018 midterms, we find that higher levels of modern sexism increased turnout among Republicans while lower levels of modern sexism increased turnout among Democrats. In 2018, sexist predispositions triggered turnout in opposing ways across the aisle.

Hot and Cold: Quantifying the Variation of Sentiment in Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

Since the appointment of John M. Harlan II in 1955, every Supreme Court nominee has testified in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. These hearings provide a fertile ground for senator ideologies, partisanship, and political forces to be on full display. However, little research has systematically analyzed confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees. In this paper, quantitative sentiment analysis is used on the transcripts of Supreme Court confirmation hearings between 1969 and 2018. By leveraging sentiment analysis, the attitudes of each of the senators during the hearings can be measured. Investigating the correlative impact that variables at the senator, institution, and nomination levels have on sentiment creates a better understanding of the factors that may influence a senator’s attitude during the hearings. A positive correlative effect on sentiment was found with an increase in the percentage of the vote the nominating president received during his most recent election in the senator’s home state. A positive correlation was also found when the nominating president and a senator were members of the same political party. Additionally, a statistically significant negative correlation was measured when the departing justice was a swing voter and when the hearing was aired on television. This research points to new avenues for using textual data to study partisanship and ideological polarization.

The Purpose of Senatorial Grandstanding during Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

AbstractUS Supreme Court confirmation hearings provide senators with an opportunity to engage a potential justice on a nationwide stage. Senators probe for information about future behavior on the bench. Nominees work through the questions, oscillating between forthcoming and vague responses. Such behavior encourages popular narratives that characterize this intricate dance as a “vapid and hollow charade.” We challenge this wisdom and argue that senators use these hearings to provide meaningful representation to their constituents while simultaneously supporting copartisan efforts regarding the nominee. We examine the exchanges in 185 senator-nominee pairings that span nearly 30 years of confirmation hearings. Our results show that senators from both parties increase their question-asking activity during divided government, when confirmation success is more dubious. Senators from the president’s party ask fewer questions when their constituents support the nominee, however, suggesting that popular support can attenuate this general effect for senators expecting a successful confirmation.

To Face Down Dixie: South Carolina's War on the Supreme Court in the Age of Civil Rights

Over the past three decades Supreme Court confirmation hearings have become media spectacles. Interest groups raise money, senators posture for the camera to position themselves for future elections, and judicial nominees remain tight lipped fearing an errant comment could sink their nomination. The politicization of the judicial nomination process did not begin with Robert Bork's doomed nomination in 1987. Rather, as the historian James O. Heath argues in To Face Down Dixie, the politicization of Senate confirmation hearings dates to the 1950s. Heath examines how South Carolina senators Olin Johnston, Strom Thurmond, and Ernest Hollings used confirmation hearings to oppose federal and Supreme Court justices in the 1950s and 1960s for political gain. None of the three men were close and did not coordinate their attacks against nominees. But they shared (more so with Johnston and Thurmond) vehement opposition to court decisions and federal legislation mandating civil rights. They used opposition to court nominees to burnish their state's rights credentials and ensure their reelections to the Senate. All three forged a process whereby, “‘Court-baiting,’ rather than race-baiting, was used by South Carolina's senators as a convenient means of asserting their state's independence by blaming presidents of both parties for making disastrous nominations” (p. 4).

The Role of Nominee Gender and Race at U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

We investigate an unexplored aspect of the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation process: whether questioning senators treat female and minority nominees differently from male and white nominees. Applying out-group theory, we argue that senators will ask female and minority nominees more questions about their “judicial philosophies” in an effort to determine their competence to serve on the Court. This out-group bias is likely to be exacerbated for nominees not sharing the senator's political party. Our results do not support racial differences, but they do provide strong evidence that female nominees receive more judicial philosophy-related questions from male senators. This effect is enhanced when the female nominee does not share the partisan affiliation of the questioning senator. Together, these findings indicate that female nominees undergo a substantively different confirmation process than male nominees. We further find that this effect may be most intense with nominees like Justice Sotomayor, whose identities align with more than one out-group.

Poison in the Ear: The Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing of Justice Clarence Thomas

When confronted with rival claims of the same event but denied any definitive way of choosing between them, when forced to decide who is lying and who is telling the truth but offered nothing by way of conclusive evidence—nothing by way of what Shakespeare’s Othello calls “ocular proof”— how, ultimately, do we decide what we decide? What explains, in other words, what we end up believing in situations where observable facts are absent and we must instead rely on, essentially, theatrical representations? This paper explores theses questions through the lens of the newly relevant Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas and the classic Shakespearean tragedy that a prominent member of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, Senator Al Simpson of Wyoming, compared it to: Othello.

Invoking Precedent: Discussion of Supreme Court Decisions at Circuit Court Confirmation Hearings

Judicial confirmation hearings offer a rare opportunity for senators to engage in a public exchange with current and future members of the federal judiciary. Below the Supreme Court level, however, we know relatively little about how members of the Judiciary Committee use these hearings. In this article, we examine senator mentions of Supreme Court cases at circuit court confirmation hearings between 1993 and 2012 to test whether these hearings serve as a venue for position-taking, as well as for interbranch dialogue. We find evidence that senators do reference decisions in ways that seem motivated by electoral considerations. However, we also find that hearings are frequently used as a forum for interbranch dialogue over Supreme Court cases. When used in this fashion, the dialogue is often focused on cases that challenge congressional power. The results suggest that confirmation hearings are an underappreciated venue for interbranch conversations.

Judging the “Vapid and Hollow Charade”: Citizen Evaluations and the Candor of U.S. Supreme Court Nominees

Supreme Court confirmation hearings have been famously called a “vapid and hollow charade” by Elena Kagan. Indeed, perceptions of nominees’ refusal to answer questions about pending cases, prominent political issues, or give any hint of their ideological leanings have become a cornerstone of the modern confirmation process. We investigate the extent to which this reticence to speak of their ideological views, or candor, influences how individuals evaluate the nominee. To this end, we present the results of a survey experiment which examines how support for a hypothetical Supreme Court nominee is affected by information, especially when a nominee is presented to be very forthright or very reticent in answering ideological questions during the confirmation hearings. We find that while partisan compatibility with the president is the main determinant of support for a nominee, nominees who refuse to answer ideological questions can bolster support from respondents who would not support them on partisan grounds. We supplement these findings with observational state-level support data from real nominees over the last 40 years.

Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change. By Paul M. CollinsJr. and Lori A. Ringhand New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 296 pp. $32.99 paperback.

Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change. By Paul M. Collins, Jr., and Lori A. Ringhand. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 296 pp. $32.99 paperback.This book does exactly what scholarly manuscript ought to do: It offers novel theoretical interpretation of long-known phenomenon, makes arguments backed up with empirical evidence and accompanied by real-life examples, and makes one think. While it remains debatable whether theirs is right view of phenomenon under study, it is absolutely case that it ought to be taken seriously and widely discussed and debated. Indeed, I urge everyone with an interest in confirmation hearings and in interplay between Congress, Supreme Court, and public, to engage with their analysis and discuss its implications. After summarizing their argument, I will do so here, in hopes of beginning conversation.In their book, Collins and Ringhand analyze Supreme Court confirmation hearings, attributing to them more meaning than has been so attributed to date. The conventional wisdom is basically that Senators are grandstanding and playing to their constituents as they ask long-winded statement/questions while nominees themselves decline to answer most basic of questions concerning their views on relevant issues. We already know, from other scholarly research, that latter is not true; Justice-Nominees do indeed answer most of questions posed to them. In addition, although, Collins and Ringhand ascribe much more meaning to questioning arguing that these hearings constitute a democratic forum for discussion and ratification of constitutional change (p. 10). They make case for their much-more-charitable interpretation of these events by showing that Senators ask questions about issues that are important to public, and that conversations they have with nominees are grounded in Supreme Court precedent. This translates, they argue, into evidence that, through process, Senate informs public of Supreme Court precedent, takes position informed by public opinion on constitutional interpretation choices made in those precedents, and communicates to Supreme Court nominees expectation that they will abide by those preferred, public-opinion-ratified constitutional understandings. They test these claims via two empirical chapters and several qualitative analyses, finding support for their view.Their characterization of hearings as democratic forum for constitutional discussion is intriguing. Indeed, many legal scholars argue that judges ought not be exclusively charged with interpreting so construal of confirmation hearings that considers people's constitution, as many scholars call it, is attractive. Is it possible that these hearings are official way in which the people contribute to constitutional conversation? Perhaps, although I have few doubts making me resist Collins and Ringhand's notion.Most importantly, I continue to struggle with considering questions asked by Senators to constitute constitutional conversation, expecting instead that they are either way for Senators to wax eloquent on issues important to their voters, or way for Senators to predict how nominee will vote. The findings reported in book remain consistent with both notions: Senators ask about policies, not about theories of constitutional interpretation; and largest impact on questioning is amount of legislation in particular issue area and not most important issue or amount of Supreme Court precedent in an issue area (although they each matter as well). …

The Institutionalization of Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

This article uses an original database of confirmation hearing dialogue to examine how the Senate Judiciary Committee's role in Supreme Court confirmations has changed over time, with particular attention paid to the 1939–2010 era. During this period, several notable developments took place, including a rise in the number of hearing comments, increased attention to nominees’ views of judicial decisions, an expansion of the scope of issues addressed, and the equalization of questioning between majority and minority party senators. We demonstrate that these changes were shaped by both endogenous and exogenous factors to promote the legitimization of the Judiciary Committee's role in the confirmation process and to foster the instrumental goals of senators. This research contributes to our understanding of the development of political institutions, interbranch interactions, and how institutional change affects the behavior of legal and political actors.

Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings in the U.S. Senate: Reconsidering the Charade

Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings in the U.S. Senate: Reconsidering the Charade

Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate: reconsidering the charade

Critics claim that Supreme Court nominees have become more evasive in recent decades and that Senate confirmation hearings lack real substance. Conducting a line-by-line analysis of the confirmation hearing of every nominee since 1955--an original dataset of nearly 11,000 questions and answers from testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee--Dion Farganis and Justin Wedeking discover that nominees are far more forthcoming than generally assumed. Applying an original scoring system to assess each nominee's testimony based on the same criteria, they show that some of the earliest nominees were actually less willing to answer questions than their contemporary counterparts. Factors such as changes in the political culture of Congress and the 1981 introduction of televised coverage of the hearings have created the impression that nominee candour is in decline. Further, senators' votes are driven more by party and ideology than by a nominee's responsiveness to their questions. Moreover, changes in the confirmation process intersect with increasing levels of party polarisation as well as constituents' more informed awareness and opinions of recent Supreme Court nominees.