BackStory

Scales of Justice: A History of Supreme Court Nominations

Another summer, another Supreme Court vacancy!

Just in time for the Kagan confirmation hearings, BackStory is delving into the long history of appointments to the Supreme Court. What qualities did presidents and lawmakers look for in Supreme Court justices 200 years ago, and how have those expectations changed? How much have nominees’ personalities and backgrounds mattered in the past? Was the confirmation process always as “politicized” as it seems today? Was it more so? How has media coverage affected the process? Join the History Guys as they explore the highlights – and lowlights – of Supreme Court nominations past.

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Full transcript

Guests Include:

Web Exclusives

  • Listen to “Justice on Horseback,” the story of early America’s wandering justices.
  • Listen to more excerpts of Brian’s interview with Henry J. Abraham.
  • Listen to the full version of Peter’s interview with Maeva Marcus.
  • Listen to the full version of Ed’s interview with Linda Przybyszewski.

Further Reading

Want to dig deeper into the history of Supreme Court Nominations? Check out this list of resources compiled by the History Guys to learn more.

20 Responses

  • What about including famous “Clerks”—-those who have gone on to fame and fortune having served
    as a Clerk for one of the Justices?

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    June Bryant
    4/15/2010 at 11:59 am

  • I would like to hear you talk about the religion of Justices and nominees. With the departure of Stevens, there will remain only a couple of Jews in an otherwise all-Catholic SCOTUS. How significant has the religion of Justices been over time? How might the issue influence the next nomination?

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    Marc Nnaimark
    4/17/2010 at 8:37 am

  • I’d like to hear you address the role of SCOTUS (and the judiciary in general) in re minority rights. I recently re-read Martha Nussbaums’s [i]Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality [/i], and I was struck by how many of the cases she cited were from the 20th century and later. In a snarky mood, I wonder how long it took people to figure out that minorities cannot by themselves win elections because they are by definition minorities. Were minorities always badly treated before circa 1940? Before then, was it all bad law, the likes of [i]Dred Scott[/i] and [i]Plessy v. Ferguson[/i]? When did the judiciary come to have the role of defending minority rights, and why?

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    Brenda Trickler
    4/18/2010 at 5:08 pm

  • Have you looked at “Pursuit of Justices” by David Yalof? (He is a UVa alum, undergraduate and law, who teaches at UConn.) It focuses on how presidents in modern times have selected their nominees to the Court, which can be a much more selective process than the Senate confirmation but is almost entirely hidden from public view.
    So much of what the public does see is political theater (once the nomination is made), and there is even more of the same from the very beginning of the process of determining who will even be considered and vetted as a potential nominee. So why, despite all of the politicking that goes into the formation of the Court, is it often seen as an apolitical counterweight to the elected branches of government?

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    Erin Monaghan
    4/20/2010 at 6:08 pm

  • Three Questions:

    1. Can you comment on people who have refused nomination since 1900? Surely there must be a few who have.

    2. Who were those justices who transcended the ideology of their geographical background and their parties? In other words, were there moderate justices who cared more about law than party politics? Tell us about them.

    3. According to many accounts, the Federalist Party continued to live in the federal judiciary long after the party vanished from electoral politics. To what extent did federalist policies shape the government during the heyday of the Jeffersonian Republicans?

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    Ted DeLaney
    4/21/2010 at 12:06 pm

  • What about the concept of “Packing” the Court?

    The Constitution sets no minimum or maximum limits on the number of Justices, so I’d enjoy hearing how the number of sitting Justices has changed over time. And how have we come to be so fixated on the number nine?

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    Dave Hogge
    5/28/2010 at 10:19 am

  • Are Supreme Court Justice’s decisions a leading or lagging indicator of societal norms?

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    Kamal Verma
    6/1/2010 at 1:01 pm

  • My first hearing of your work. If (speaking of logic) what you did in this effort in comparison to public radio in general is like comparing a warm pancake to a cold mash of swamp water and moldy flour, I’ll bet you could manufacture a hot, tangy, nutritious, and healthy cinnamon roll: if you followed further what seems to have been the guiding principle that got you this far, which is, is this interesting to me, the radio guy? In a word, sincerity.
    I wrote my law school graduation thesis on sincerity, and the faculty member accepted it on the proviso that it was not about sincerity. I didn’t use the word and I demurred at his comment. More to the point, he asked me if I wanted to publish it and I flatly rejected the idea.
    “Don’t sell yourself short.”

    I’ll bet you could use the radio forum (you, microphone, transmitter, a receiver or two, an audience) to model the idea of law. My definition of authority is it adorns the guy who gets listened to first in the given instance (talk about a shifting concept). So immediately you have a dilemma: is a guy authoritative (in the minds of the audience) because she solves problems or because she white-washes them? That was your point about we, the people. The question for law is, can this process, this dilemma, be identified as it is encountered–is white-washing an objective concept? I’ll bet you could use radio to prove that people do recognize sincerity, that it exists, and not simply as intensity, but as candor. Ask people about Holmes on that score.

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    Christopher Rushlau
    6/24/2010 at 2:14 pm

  • Sooo interesting. I wish someone here in England would wake up to this idea that the parties no longer express the will of the people but rather frustrate it. But also I fond the idea of elected judges very confusing – can anyone stand as a judge or do you need basic qualifications? How does it work?

    Quote
    john ledbury
    4/14/2012 at 1:32 pm

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