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Supreme Court

All Faculty Scholarship

2011

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Choosing Justices: How Presidents Decide, Joel K. Goldstein Jan 2011

Choosing Justices: How Presidents Decide, Joel K. Goldstein

All Faculty Scholarship

Presidents play the critical role in determining who will serve as justices on the Supreme Court and their decisions inevitably influence constitutional doctrine and judicial behavior long after their terms have ended. Notwithstanding the impact of these selections, scholars have focused relatively little attention on how presidents decide who to nominate. This article contributes to the literature in the area by advancing three arguments. First, it adopts an intermediate course between the works which tend to treat the subject historically without identifying recurring patterns and those which try to reduce the process to empirical formulas which inevitably obscure considerations shaping …


Leading The Court: Studies In Influence As Chief Justice, Joel K. Goldstein Jan 2011

Leading The Court: Studies In Influence As Chief Justice, Joel K. Goldstein

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Chief Justice Roberts has now completed five years of what is likely to be a lengthy tenure in the Court’s center seat. The quality of his institutional leadership, like that of his predecessors, resists confident contemporary assessment to a unique degree among principal offices of American government inasmuch as much of what a Chief Justice does is invisible to all but a relatively few observers, most or all of whom generally remain discreetly silent about such matters. Nonetheless, history counsels that the professional and interpersonal skill which a Chief Justice displays may substantially affect the Supreme Court and the quality …