More than 200 interest groups have submitted testimony in support of Sonia Sotomayor -- eclipsing the next-most-praised Supreme Court nominees 10 times over. Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas had previously shared the record, with 21 interest groups in support of each judge during their nomination.
Just eight groups submitted testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to Sotomayor, compared with 66 filing against Samuel Alito in 2005. The last nominees chosen by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, didn't trigger nearly as much interest group attention: Ruth Bader Ginsburg motivated 10 groups to submit testimony and Stephen Breyer only six.
The chance to put the first Latina on the high court has no doubt contributed to the unusual level of interest, as did Obama's popularity on the left and the Democrats' first chance at a Supreme Court appointment since 1994. But the heightened involvement from interest groups is also a product of convenience: More than they have in the past, groups added their names to joint letters of support, some of which were signed by dozens of organizations. "It's easy to attach themselves to a letter," said Jeffrey Segal, a political science professor at Stony Brook University who compiled the data included in this graph. "There's no cost for them to do that."
The increased politicization of the Supreme Court confirmation process also contributes to the numbers. "It's an easy way for groups to rev up their base and to send out letters asking for support," Segal said. "It becomes a way for these groups to raise their visibility."
Editor's note: This is the fifth in a series examining historical data from a database compiled by Northwestern law professor Lee Epstein and her colleagues.
Sonia Sotomayor's supporters -- and even some detractors -- have praised her for her long judicial career. What stands out in particular is that she would become only the second justice to join the Supreme Court since 1937 with any federal district court experience at all, according to a NationalJournal.com analysis.
Sotomayor's 17-year career on the federal bench ranks just ahead of Samuel Alito's 16 years and Stephen Breyer's 14 years among the 43 nominees of the last 72 years, as shown in the graph below. Six of those years were spent in district court, more than the two logged by Justice Charles Evans Whittaker, who joined the Supreme Court in 1957.
Among failed nominees, Nixon pick G. Harrold Carswell had 11 years of federal trial court experience. Johnson selection William Homer Thornberry had two years.
Many legal experts and sitting judges at the appellate and district levels have applauded this part of Sotomayor's resume; they say the high court too often sets precedents without taking into serious consideration how they should apply at the lower levels.
If Sotomayor is appointed, the justices with double-digit years of experience on the federal bench would make up the majority for the first time in the decades covered by this analysis. In addition to Alito and Breyer among current justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Anthony Kennedy both had served 13 years before joining the Supreme Court. Retiring Justice David Souter served a mere handful of months on the federal appeals bench.
Editor's note: This is the fourth in a series examining historical data from a database compiled by Northwestern law professor Lee Epstein and her colleagues. Check back for more context and analysis on Sotomayor.
Democrats shouldn't necessarily relax if Sonia Sotomayor wins confirmation to the Supreme Court. There's the matter of how long she'll be there.
In a NationalJournal.com analysis of Supreme Court nominees going back to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration, justices picked by Democrats have served about five years less on average than those picked by Republicans. Not counting current members of the court, GOP nominees have served about 20 years each, compared to about 15 for Democratic picks.
At 55, Sotomayor is close to the average of all nominees since 1937: about 53.5 years. But those closest to her in age have tended to serve less time yet. There have been 11 justices who were 53 to 57 as nominees; three are on the current court (John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito) and two left the court early (Arthur Goldberg to become ambassador to the United Nations, and Abe Fortas in a controversy over a past honorarium). The other six averaged about 14 years on the court.
Of course, these numbers don't take an individual's own circumstances into account, and they can't account for the many reasons why justices might step down. In 1942, longtime FDR ally James Byrnes left after 16 months to become Roosevelt's "assistant president."
But Democrats seeking good news in these stats can point to two numbers. The average age for a justice leaving the court going back to the FDR era is 71. And if you don't count Alito or John Roberts, the two newest justices, every confirmed nominee going back to Thurgood Marshall has served at least 15 years.
Editor's note: This is the third in a series of posts examining historical data from a database compiled by Northwestern law professor Lee Epstein and her colleagues. Keep checking back for more context and analysis on Sotomayor.
Turnover on the Supreme Court has led to increasingly conservative nominees and likely a more conservative court, according to an analysis of nominees' ideological ratings dating back to 1937.
This study measures a nominee's ideology according to the Segal-Cover score, a 0-1 system that uses major newspapers' editorials to gauge perception of a nominee (0 is the most conservative). The graph below expands on Tuesday's analysis of nominees since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration.
The green line tracks the average score of nominees serving on the court since 1950, the first year the entire court was made up of justices in the S-C system. The chart begins a shift from liberal to middle-of-the-road to conservative at the same time Republican presidents began to make most of the picks, starting with Richard Nixon.
The trend underscores the notion laid out by several SCOTUS observers since Justice David Souter announced his retirement: that no nominee President Obama was likely to pick would shift the court's conservative slant. In a review of the high court's term today, the Washington Post describes "a patient and steady move to the right led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., one that is likely to continue even if" Obama "is successful in adding Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the high court -- and perhaps two others like her."
Since the scores are based on editorials written before the nominee is confirmed, the system is by no means foolproof. Assumptions or bias in the media could skew the results, and justices sometimes change while serving. John Paul Stevens and Harry Blackmun scored as safely conservative nominees, but both became known as strong liberals. Souter himself scored as more conservative than either Sandra Day O'Connor or Anthony Kennedy but later joined Blackmun and Stevens in the court's liberal bloc.
Jeffrey Segal, a political science professor and half of the duo that developed the system, told NationalJournal.com last month that the ideology ratings do "an excellent job of predicting justices' overall liberalism or conservatism once they're on the Supreme Court." He said he's found a 0.79 "correlation coefficient." This means that you can predict the justices' overall voting behavior "fairly accurately simply by knowing their ideology," Segal said.
Segal has said Sotomayor would likely score near Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 0.68. That's comfortably in the liberal side but not far from the median in the S-C system.
Editor's note: This is the second in a series of posts examining historical data from a database compiled by Northwestern law professor Lee Epstein and her colleagues. Check back next week for more context and analysis on Sotomayor.
Updated at 9:00 p.m., June 30
Sonia Sotomayor likely rivals Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the most liberal Supreme Court nominee of the last 40 years. But that still places her solidly within the mainstream of modern nominees to the bench, according to an analysis of Segal-Cover scores dating back to 1937.
Jeffrey Segal, who helped develop the system for grading nominees' perceived ideological leanings, told NationalJournal.com in early June that Sotomayor would likely have a similar score to Ginsburg -- around 0.68 on the 0-1 scale, with 0 being most conservative. If that's the case, Sotomayor would rank as one of the more liberal judges to be nominated since 1937, but she would hardly approach figures such as William Brennan or Thurgood Marshall, both of whom rate at 1 on the scale.
Ginsburg currently ranks as the court's 17th most liberal nominee going back to the FDR administration. The 10 most conservative nominees during that period include four current justices: Antonin Scalia (he tops the list with a score of 0), Samuel Alito (0.10), Chief Justice John Roberts (0.12) and Clarence Thomas (0.16). Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist comes in third, with a score of 0.05, and President Reagan's failed nominee Robert Bork is up there as well, with a score of 0.10.
To configure Sotomayor's score, Segal will continue evaluating editorials from five major newspapers -- the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times -- until the full Senate votes. The Journal was added starting with David Souter's nomination in 1990 to compensate for the Los Angeles Times' drift leftward, Segal said.
Editor's note: This is the first of a series of posts The Ninth Justice is doing examining historical data from a database compiled by Northwestern law professor Lee Epstein and her colleagues. Check back later this week for more context and analysis on Sotomayor.
