Do They "Know Them When They See Them?": The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary and Qualifications for the Federal Bench

 

The project explores the role of the Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary (SCFJ) in rating the qualifications of nominees to the federal judiciary. It proceeds in three parts:

 

• In the first part, I identify the source and magnitude of the apparent bias against Republican presidents' nominees to the circuit courts of appeals using a unique data set. The set comprises political and demographic characteristics of members of the SCFJ. The additional data allow me to identify the mechanism that produces the SCFJ's apparent bias.

• In the second part, I examine the consequences of ABA ratings. Specifically, I look at the discourse in nominees' confirmation hearings to see if ABA ratings affect discussion -- e.g., sentors' questioning -- of the nominees. In this section, I use the knowledge gained from the first section to create an adjusted measure of nominee qualifications to avoid collinearity with measures of ideology.

• In the final section, I answer why senators and presidents still value the ABA's input and delegate part of the quasi-governmental investigatory function, given the controversy that surrounds the ratings. I employ a principal-agent framework within the "new economics of organization" to guide this section.