Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T06:20:44.144Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Obama’s Judicial Legacy: The Final Chapter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Elliot Slotnick ,
Sara Schiavoni  and
Sheldon Goldman
Elliot Slotnick
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Sara Schiavoni*
Affiliation:
John Carroll University
Sheldon Goldman
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
*
Contact the corresponding author, Sara Schiavoni, at [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article looks at the appointment and confirmation politics of President Obama’s nominees during the 114th Congress in which unprecedented obstruction and delay of Obama's nominees including the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland occurred. This is placed within the overall context of Obama’s impact on the judiciary. The demographic portrait of the Obama judiciary is sketched with special attention to the historic record of diverse nontraditional appointees. We conclude with a look at what lies ahead with the Trump administration and judicial appointments/confirmation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Fall 2017 , pp. 363 - 422
Copyright
© 2017 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors wish to thank all those who made themselves available for interviews. Some have no problem with being mentioned by name, and we are happy to publicly acknowledge them. Other prefer to remain unidentified, a preference we have honored. Sheldon Goldman wishes to thank Nicholas Frasso and Alejandro Ohms for their research assistance.

References

Applebaum, Yoni. 2016. “Trump’s Promise to Jail Clinton Is a Threat to American Democracy.” Atlantic, October 10.Google Scholar
Baum, Lawrence, and Neal Devins. 2017. “Federalist Court: How the Federalist Society Became the De Facto Selector of Republican Supreme Court Justices.” William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository: Popular Media, no. 407.Google Scholar
Benery, Jennifer. 2015. “Mitch McConnell Says Obama’s Circuit Court Nominees Won’t Be Confirmed.” Huffington Post, June 5.Google Scholar
Binder, Sarah A., and Forrest Maltzman. 2009. Advice and Dissent: The Struggle to Shape the Federal Judiciary. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, Christina L., Lee Epstein, and Andrew D. Martin. 2010. “Untangling the Causal Effects of Sex on Judging.” American Journal of Political Science 54:389–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brudney, James J., Sara Schiavoni, and Deborah J. Merritt. 1999. “Judicial Hostility toward Labor Unions? Applying the Social Background Model to a Celebrated Concern.” Ohio State Law Journal 60:1675–1766.Google Scholar
Chew, Pat K., and Robert E. Kelley. 2009. “Myth of the Color-Blind Judge: An Empirical Analysis of Racial Harassment Cases.” Washington University Law Review 86:1117–66.Google Scholar
CNN. 2016. “It’s Official: Clinton Sweeps Trump in Popular Vote.” December 22.Google Scholar
DelReal, Jose A., and Jenna Johnson. 2016. “Donald Trump Keeps Attacking Fellow Republicans.” Washington Post, May 25.Google Scholar
Denning, Brannon P. 2002. “The Judicial Confirmation Process and the Blue Slip.” Judicature 85:218–26.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, William M. Landes, and Richard A. Posner. 2013. The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Everett, Burgess, and Glenn Thrush. 2016. “McConnell Throws Down the Gauntlet: No Scalia Replacement under Obama.” Politico, February 13.Google Scholar
Farhang, Sean, Jonathan P. Kastellec, and Gregory J. Wawro. 2015. “The Politics of Opinion Assignment and Authorship on the U.S. Court of Appeals: Evidence from Sexual Harassment Cases.” Journal of Legal Studies 44:S59–S85.Google Scholar
Farhang, Sean, and Gregory Wawro. 2004. “Institutional Dynamics on the U.S. Court of Appeals: Minority Representation under Panel Decision Making.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 20:299–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fontana, David. 2017. “Cooperative Judicial Nominations during the Obama Administration.” Wisconsin Law Review 2017:285–323.Google Scholar
Goldman, Sheldon. 1997. Picking Federal Judges. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Goldman, Sheldon. 2003. “Assessing the Senate Judicial Confirmation Process: The Index of Obstruction and Delay.” Judicature 86:251–57.Google Scholar
Goldman, Sheldon, Sara Schiavoni, and Elliot Slotnick. 2009. “W. Bush’s Judicial Legacy: Mission Accomplished.” Judicature 92:258–88.Google Scholar
Goldman, Sheldon, Slotnick, Elliot, and Schiavoni, Sara. 2011. “Obama’s Judiciary at Midterm: The Confirmation Drama Continues.” Judicature 94:262–303.Google Scholar
Goldman, Sheldon, Slotnick, Elliot, and Schiavoni, Sara. 2013. “Obama’s First Term Judiciary: Picking Judges in the Minefield of Obstructionism.” Judicature 97:7–47.Google Scholar
Graham, David A. 2016. “What Happens If Republicans Refuse to Replace Justice Scalia?” Atlantic, November 1.Google Scholar
Grossman, Matt, and David A. Hopkins. 2016. Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haire, Susan B., and Laura P. Moyer. 2015. Diversity Matters: Judicial Policy Making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Ingram, Matthew. 2016. “President Trump vs. the Media Will Be an Epic Battle.” Fortune, November 11.Google Scholar
Kenney, Sally J. 2013. Gender and Justice: Why Women in the Judiciary Really Matter. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kim, Swung Min. 2015. “‘Put That in Your Pipe and Smoke It’ Grassley Tells Schumer on Judges.” Politico, July 30.Google Scholar
New York Times. 2016. “Donald Trump Says He Will Accept Election Outcome (‘If I Win’).” October 20.Google Scholar
New York Times. 2017. “White House Ends Bar Association’s Role in Vetting Judges.” April 1.Google Scholar
O’Connell, Anne Joseph. 2015. “Shortening Agency and Judicial Vacancies through Filibuster Reform? An Examination of Confirmation Rates and Delays from 1981–2014.” Duke Law Journal 64:1645–1715.Google Scholar
Peresie, Jennifer L. 2005. “Female Judges Matter: Gender and Collegial Decisionmaking in the Federal Appellate Courts.” Yale Law Journal 114:1759–90.Google Scholar
Rehnquist, William. 2001. 2000 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. Chief Justice’s Year-End Reports on the Federal Judiciary. Washington, DC: Supreme Court of the United States.Google Scholar
Roberts, John. 2008. 2007 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. Chief Justice’s Year-End Reports on the Federal Judiciary. Washington, DC: Supreme Court of the United States.Google Scholar
Slotnick, Elliot, Sheldon Goldman, and Sara Schiavoni. 2015. “Writing the Book of Judges: Part 1: Obama’s Judicial Appointments Record after Six Years.” Journal of Law and Courts 3:331–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slotnick, Elliot, Sara Schiavoni, and Sheldon Goldman. 2016. “Writing the Book of Judges: Part 2: Confirmation Politics in the 113th Congress.” Journal of Law and Courts 4:187–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smelcer, Susan Navarro, Amy Steigerwalt, and Richard L. Vining. 2012. “Bias and the Bar: Evaluating the ABA’s Ratings of Federal Judicial Nominees.” Political Research Quarterly 65:827–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steigerwalt, Amy. 2010. Battle over the Bench: Senators, Interest Groups, and Lower Court Confirmations. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R., David Schkade, Lisa M. Ellman, and Andres Sawicki. 2006. Are Judges Political? An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Tobias, Carl. 2016. “Fixing the Federal Judicial Selection Process.” Emory Law Journal Online 65:2051–59.Google Scholar
USA Today. 2016. “Fact Check: Trump Defends Claim on Oswald and Cruz’s Father.” July 23.Google Scholar
Wall Street Journal. 2016. “Trump Says Judge’s Mexican Heritage Presents ‘Absolute Conflict.’” June 3.Google Scholar
Washington Post. 2017. “Senate Republicans Likely to Change Custom That Allows Democrats to Block Judicial Choices.” May 25.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Russell. 2016. “How Trump Could Reshape the Lower Courts.” Brookings FixGov blog, November 17. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/11/17/trump-lower-courts.Google Scholar