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Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate : reconsidering the charade / Dion Farganis and Justin Wedeking.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Farganis, Dion, author.
- Wedeking, Justin, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- United States. Supreme Court--Officials and employees--Selection and appointment.
- United States.
- United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary.
- Judges--Selection and appointment--United States.
- Judges.
- Legislative hearings--United States.
- Legislative hearings.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (xi, 162 pages) : illustrations
- Place of Publication:
- Ann Arbor : The University of Michigan Press, [2014]
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- 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 candor 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 polarization as well as constituents' more informed awareness and opinions of recent Supreme Court nominees.
- Contents:
- A vapid and hollow charade?
- The hearings in historical perspective
- Coding the hearings
- Are Supreme Court nominees forthcoming?
- Polarized and televised : changes in committee voting since 1980
- The perception gap
- Can the hearings be improved? Do they need to be?
- Notes:
- Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 147-158) and index.
- Description based on information from the publisher.
- ISBN:
- 9780472120277
- 0472120271
- OCLC:
- 877049852
- Publisher Number:
- 10.3998/mpub.5918574
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