Senate Confirmation of Supreme Court Justices: Partisan and Institutional Politics

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Abstract
A president's most important appointments are to the Supreme Court of the United States. Unlike cabinet officers, the Senate does not routinely confirm Supreme Court justices. To study this phenomenon, I propose four related models of confirmation. The models assume senators to be political persons motivated by both partisan and institutional concerns. The data consist of 138 confirmation decisions, with the parameters estimated by probit. The models explain between 38% and 42% of the variance in confirmation decisions, while predicting 87% and 88% of the cases correctly. Institutional politics are at least as important as partisan politics in predicting decisions.