Judicial appointments extend presidential influence far beyond a term

Evidence

Justice Brennan’s career, spanning eight presidencies, shows that Supreme Court appointments can influence the course of the nation, for better or worse, long after a president’s term has ended (see Table 3.5). Not surprisingly, then, presidents tend to take an active part in the selection of Supreme Court justices. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 511

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the earlier ch2 claim that docket discretion made the Court a law-developing court — long-tenured justices developing law across decades is the payoff. — connects to: A Supreme Court vacancy is the president’s primary lever for moving the Court — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 362; Federal judges serve extremely long tenures averaging twenty years or more. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 461; Judges act as temporally extended representatives of their appointing party. (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Judges act as temporally extended representatives of their appointing party. #expands (0.95)
• Political selection fills the courts with judges holding established partisan views #expands (0.85) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2571