senate committee rejection of judicial candidates

[James Lindgren]

The process for lower court appointees is very different than for circuit
appointees--senatorial courtesy is usually observed, the stakes are much lower,
and confirmation rates are higher.  The court of appeals is where the action
is.

Jim Lindgren
Northwestern

Keith E. Whittington wrote:

> An interesting hypothesis, and perhaps part of the strategy in this case
> (though pretty slow in getting around to it and not very selective in
> implementation -- surely some of Bush's first nominations would be
> acceptable even under the heightened standard of a Democratic Senate).
> Worth noting that recent work by Nancy Scherer finds no such Senate-specific
> effects from a change in Senate partisanship on lower court appointments
> during the Reagan and Clinton administrations.  The kind of minority
> obstructionism that this thread has been discussing might suggest one reason
> why this would be the case -- narrow partisan majorities are not the
> critical pivot-point for Senate confirmation on low-level officials
> (Jeffords' switch should not have made any difference to Bush's
> understanding of what kinds of nominees would go through the Senate).
>
> keith
>
> Mark Tushnet wrote:
>
> > Jim Lindgren asks about the status of the first batch of nominations the
> > President made.  I haven't checked, but I'm reasonably confident that
> > most (of the unconfirmed ones) haven't had hearings.  Note, though, that
> > the first batch of nominations was made when the Republicans controlled
> > the Senate, and the President could reasonably have assumed that
> > nominations the Democrats would characterize as highly ideological (I
> > take no position on the accuracy of that characterization) would go
> > through rather quickly.  As I understand it (not on the basis of any
> > inside information), the Democratic strategy underlying the Pickering
> > fight was to send a message to the President that nominations that the
> > Democrats regarded as highly ideological would face serious problems.  I
> > would suppose the Democrats would be waiting to see the White House
> > response (evidenced in new nominations, selective withdrawal of earlier
> > ones, and the like) before they would start processing the first batch.
>
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