Abstract
Judicial confirmations have become divisive political battle between the Senate and the president. Much of the literature on presidential success for judicial confirmations focuses on the party alignment of the Senate and the presidency. Little attention is given to the importance of nominee age to predict the success of the president. I advance a theory of strategic nomination of judges by the president; it posits that both the president and Senate care about the age of nominees to the courts, while building off the extant party literature. I should be more likely to see presidential success in appointing younger judges under same party control (i.e. the presidency and the Senate are ideologically the same) than when there is split party control. I evaluate this hypothesis with data on all U.S. Courts of Appeals and Supreme Court nominations during the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations and find substantive support in favor of it.
How to Cite
Condry, J., (2020) “Party Politics and Nominee Age: Why Some Presidents Fail to Get Judges on the Federal Bench and Others Succeed”, Capstone, The UNC Asheville Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship 33(1).
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