Despite increased political attention to instances of legislative obstruction in recent years, little is known about the public’s attitudes toward these procedural techniques. I evaluate these attitudes in the context of the last two decades of nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court with three complementary analyses. In the first, nationally representative survey evidence reveals an overriding political dimension to Americans’ attitudes over the use of tactics to delay the confirmation process. The president’s copartisans express considerably higher levels of opposition to delayed consideration of a nominee than individuals politically opposed to the president. In the second and third, evidence from observational surveys and a survey experiment shows that these attitudes vary depending on the type of the obstruction under consideration, with Americans less supportive of the use of forms of obstruction that entirely preclude procedural consideration of a nominee, such as refusing to hold hearings, than more established methods that do not, like the filibuster or document requests. These findings reveal that the American public has internalized the political stakes of judicial nominations and suggest that obstruction may have electoral consequences in an era of extreme polarization.

Supreme Court confirmation hearings place the often-reclusive institution in the public spotlight and afford members of the Senate Judiciary Committee the ability to pursue important personal and party goals. I construct and evaluate a measure of rhetorical sentiment that considers the positive and negative behaviors of committee members during Supreme Court confirmation hearings between 1971 and 2020. While some observers have pointed to the evolving dynamics of confirmation hearings as being the result of key inflection points, I find that these events alone do not explain rhetorical behaviors. Instead, my results suggest that rhetorical behaviors have been predominately mediated by structures of party control and the balance of interbranch political power since at least the 1970s. I conclude by noting how these behaviors can further deteriorate the public’s perceptions that the Court remains insulated from the contentious political environment.

Judicial nominations, particularly those to the Supreme Court, have been a salient topic in recent presidential and senate elections. However, there has been little research to determine whether judicial nominations motivate political behavior. Across three studies we demonstrate the important role judicial nominations play in influencing political behavior. In Study 1, we analyze the extent to which voters perceive judicial nominations as an important electoral issue. We find that Republicans—and especially strong Republicans—are more likely to perceive judicial nominations as important. In Study 2, we analyze how congruence with an incumbent Senator's judicial confirmation votes influences voters’ decision to vote for the incumbent. We find that congruence with a Senator's judicial confirmation votes is a strong predictor of vote choice. Finally, in Study 3, we analyze data from an original conjoint experiment aimed at simulating a Senate primary election where voters must select among co-partisans. We find that Republican subjects are more likely to select a primary candidate who prioritizes confirming conservative Supreme Court nominees. Among Democratic subjects, however, we find that Democratic candidates who prioritize the Court might actually suffer negative electoral consequences. Overall, our results demonstrate the importance of judicial nominations as an electoral issue.

Contemporary US Supreme Court nominations are unavoidably and inevitably political. Although observers worry that political contestation over nominations undermines support for qualified nominees and threatens the Court's legitimacy, there is little empirical evidence to support these claims. The authors argue that political contestation over judicial nominations provides cues that shape the public's impressions about nominees and the Court and polarizes public opinion across partisan lines. Data from a conjoint experiment administered in the first days of the Trump presidency support this argument. Political rhetoric attributed to President Trump and Senate Democrats substantially polarized partisans’ views of nominees and evaluations of the Court's legitimacy, with Republicans (Democrats) expressing significantly more (less) favorable attitudes. Additional analyses suggest that contestation generates divergent partisan responses by affecting views about the nominee's impartiality. These findings challenge existing perspectives that depict attitudes toward the judiciary as resistant to partisan considerations and have important implications for the Court's legitimacy in a polarized era.