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Who Drives the Ideological Makeup of the Lower Federal Courts in a Divided Government?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Nancy Scherer
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Abstract

In this article, I examine whether divided government has any meaningful impact on the type of judges appointed to the lower federal courts. Specifically, I compare the voting behavior of Clinton judges confirmed before and after the Republicans took majority control of the Senate as well as the voting behavior of judges appointed by President Reagan before and after the Democrats took control of the Senate in the 1980s in order to detect whether judges appointed under divided government are more moderate than those under unified government. Believing that the Senate lacks the resources to have a meaningful impact in shaping judicial ideology on the lower federal courts—as hundreds of judges must be confirmed during the course of a presidential administration—I hypothesize that there is no difference in voting behavior between judges appointed under united and divided government. Consistent with my hypothesis, I find that there is no difference in voting behavior between judges appointed during united and divided government in three critical issue areas: search and seizure cases, race discrimination cases, and federalism cases. This was true of judges appointed during the Clinton and Reagan presidencies, and was true in all three issue areas tested.

Type
Papers of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , 2001 , pp. 191 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Law and Society Association

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Footnotes

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Conference in Chicago (April 2000), and the Conference on the Scientific Study of Judicial Politics in Columbus, Ohio (October 2000). The author wishes to thank her discussants at these conferences: Jeffrey Segal, Thomas Walker, and Shari Diamond. The author also is indebted to the participants of the America Politics Workshop at the University of Chicago for their insightful comments and suggestions regarding this article. Finally, the author wishes to thank her dissertation committee: Gerald Rosenberg, Michael Dawson, and Dennis Hutchinson.

References

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