Explains how United States presidents select justices for the Supreme Court, evaluates the performance of each justice, and examines the influence of politics on their selection.

This book demonstrates that the hearings to confirm Supreme Court nominees are in fact a democratic forum for the discussion and ratification of constitutional change.

Table of contents

Contents: (1) Recent Activity: Activity During 2010, 2009, and 2005-2006: Recent Nominations: Roberts, Miers, Alito; (2) Measuring the Pace of Supreme Court (SC) Appoint.; (3) How SC Vacancies Occur: Death of a Sitting Justice (SJ): Retirement or Resignation of a SJ; Nomination of a SJ to Another Position; Controversial, Withdrawn, and Rejected Nominations; (4) Date of Actual or Prospective Vacancy; Announcement-of-Nominee Date: Use of Medians to Summarize Intervals; The Duration of the Nomination-and-Confirmation Process: Changes Since 1981; Factors Influencing the Speed of the Process: How the Vacancy Occurs; The Senate¿s Schedule; Committee Involvement and Institutional Customs; Controversial Nominations.

Winner of the Society for History in the Federal Government's George Pendleton Prize for 2013 The United States Senate has fallen on hard times. Once known as the greatest deliberative body in the world, it now has a reputation as a partisan, dysfunctional chamber. What happened to the house that forged American history's great compromises? In this groundbreaking work, a distinguished journalist and an eminent historian provide an insider's history of the United States Senate. Richard A. Baker, historian emeritus of the Senate, and the late Neil MacNeil, former chief congressional correspondent for Time magazine, integrate nearly a century of combined experience on Capitol Hill with deep research and state-of-the-art scholarship. They explore the Senate's historical evolution with one eye on persistent structural pressures and the other on recent transformations. Here, for example, are the Senate's struggles with the presidency--from George Washington's first, disastrous visit to the chamber on August 22, 1789, through now-forgotten conflicts with Presidents Garfield and Cleveland, to current war powers disputes. The authors also explore the Senate's potent investigative power, and show how it began with an inquiry into John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. It took flight with committees on the conduct of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and World War II; and it gained a high profile with Joseph McCarthy's rampage against communism, Estes Kefauver's organized-crime hearings (the first to be broadcast), and its Watergate investigation. Within the book are surprises as well. For example, the office of majority leader first acquired real power in 1952--not with Lyndon Johnson, but with Republican Robert Taft. Johnson accelerated the trend, tampering with the sacred principle of seniority in order to control issues such as committee assignments. Rampant filibustering, the authors find, was the ironic result of the passage of 1960s civil rights legislation. No longer stigmatized as a white-supremacist tool, its use became routine, especially as the Senate became more partisan in the 1970s. Thoughtful and incisive, The American Senate: An Insider's History transforms our understanding of Congress's upper house.

The Supreme Court Compendium provides historical and statistical information on the Supreme Court: its institutional development; caseload; decision trends; the background, nomination, and voting behavior of its justices; its relationship with public, governmental, and other judicial bodies; and its impact. With over 180 tables and figures, this new edition is intended to capture the full retrospective picture through the 2013-2014 term of the Roberts Court and the momentous decisions handed down within the last four years, including United States v. Windsor, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, and Shelby County v. Holder.

First Amendment Freedoms: A Reference Handbook offers a comprehensive examination of the discourse on First Amendment freedom issues in an objective and unbiased manner and provides valuable data and documents to guide readers to further research on the subject. First Amendment Freedoms: A Reference Handbook provides a comprehensive, objective, and accessible source of critically important information on the First Amendment freedoms of religion, speech, and assembly, and the post-Civil War Fourteenth Amendment. Geared for high school and college readers, it covers relevant historical events from the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to the array of Supreme Court cases that further defined the scope and limits of First Amendment freedoms. Composed of seven chapters, plus a glossary and index, the volume will present the background and history of the First Amendment; problems, controversies, and solutions; a perspectives chapter with nine original essay contributions; profiles of the leading actors and organizations involved in First Amendment politics; governmental data and excerpts of primary documents on the topic; and a resources chapter comprising an annotated list of the key books, scholarly journals, and nonprint sources on the topic. It closes with a detailed chronology of major events concerning First Amendment freedoms.

The sixth edition of the classic and concise account of the US Supreme Court, its history, and its place in American politics. For more than fifty years, Robert G. McCloskey’s classic work on the Supreme Court’s role in constructing the US Constitution has introduced generations of students to the workings of our nation’s highest court. As in prior editions, McCloskey’s original text remains unchanged. In his historical interpretation, he argues that the strength of the Court has always been its sensitivity to the changing political scene, as well as its reluctance to stray too far from the main currents of public sentiment. In this new edition, Sanford Levinson extends McCloskey’s magisterial treatment to address developments since the 2010 election, including the Supreme Court’s decisions regarding the Defense of Marriage Act, the Affordable Care Act, and gay marriage. The best and most concise account of the Supreme Court and its place in American politics, McCloskey’s wonderfully readable book is an essential guide to the past, present, and future prospects of this institution. Praise for The American Supreme Court “The classic account of the American Supreme Court by the mid-twentieth century’s most astute student of American constitutionalism updated by the early twenty-first century’s most astute student of American constitutionalism. This is the first work constitutional beginners should—and constitutional scholars do—turn to.” —Mark Graber, University of Maryland School of Law “Essential. . . . This fifth edition carries on the tradition of earlier iterations, keeping McCloskey’s keen insights, analytical framework, and normative instincts intact. . . . Levinson supplements the original argument with chapters . . . that draw on his remarkable intellectual range and invite readers to continue asking the still-salient questions McCloskey set forth a half-century earlier.” —Choice, on the fifth edition