The Nomination and Confirmation of Federal Judges: An Integrated Approach

Abstract

Despite a voluminous literature on the factors affecting the time to confirmation for judicial nominees, and a smaller but robust literature on the time to nomination, scholars have seldom treated the process of filling a federal court vacancy as an integrated one. Although our understanding of institutional interactions has been advanced by evaluating the factors that influence the time to a President’s nomination or the time to Senate confirmation, looking individually at the two steps needed to fill the vacancy necessarily ignores the interconnected and dynamic nature of the process. Here we argue for a new and unified approach to the nomination and confirmation process. One of the advantages of this perspective is the ability to evaluate whether or not the president and Senate fill vacancies on busier courts faster than on courts with smaller caseloads. We find some evidence that caseloads matter for vacancies, suggesting that district court nomination and confirmation battles are more than merely opportunities for political posturing by the executive and legislature.

Keywords: judges, Senate, confirmation, nomination, judicial vacancies