Counting Congress In: Patterns of Success in Judicial Nomination Requests by Members of Congress to Presidents Eisenhower and Ford

The power to nominate and confirm federal judges is shared by Congress and the president, yet few works explicitly address the role that Congress plays in shaping the preselection pool for judicial nominees. In this article, we illuminate this debate by exploring judicial nomination requests from Members of Congress to the Eisenhower and Ford Administrations. In explaining who is nominated, the characteristics of the nominee matter more than the characteristics of the nominator, with the party affiliation of a nominee being the strongest predictive factor. Institutional characteristics are more prevalent at the confirmation stage, where the Senate relied more heavily on its members and the judicial experience of nominees than did presidents in nominating them. Given our results, partisanship appears to have mattered earlier than presumed in judicial nominations, with even ostensibly nonpartisan presidents such as Eisenhower understanding the importance of appointing like-minded individuals to lifetime positions on the bench.