GSPM Blog

Picking Supreme Court Justices: Presidential Wins, Losses

With President Obama’s appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, it’s a good time to review recent history of Court nominations – and how they ultimately fared.  Over the past 50 years, 27 people have been appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court and of those 19 (70 percent) were confirmed, 3 were rejected, 4 were withdrawn and no action was taken on one of them.

Of the eight that didn’t make it:

• Three Court nominees were rejected by the Senate. They were Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, Nixon appointees, and Robert Bork, a Reagan submission. Haynsworth and Carswell each received 45 votes in the Senate while Bork captured only 42.

• Four nominees either withdrew their nominations or no action was taken. Justice Abe Fortas’ nomination to become Chief Justice in 1968 was filibustered and withdrawn. As a result, Homer Thornberry’s appointment by LBJ to fill Fortas’ seat as an Associate Justice was derailed as well.

• The most recent withdrawal was the controversial 2005 nomination of Harriet Miers by President George W. Bush. Shortly before that happened, John Roberts’ withdrew his nomination for the seat of retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor upon Bush’s appointment of Roberts to the position of Chief Justice upon the death of William Rehnquist.

• In 1987, President Reagan’s court pick, Douglas Ginsburg, withdrew his nomination before it had been officially submitted to the Senate – after his admission of smoking marijuana.

The last Justice confirmed without a dissenting vote was Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan choice, in 1987.  Over the past half-century, only 4 other nominations were confirmed unanimously, they were Harry Blackmun in 1970, John Paul Stevens in 1975, Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981 and Antonin Scalia in 1986.

Over the last 50 years, the average votes cast in the Senate against Supreme Court nominees has averaged 17.

Reaching back throughout history, here’s some other notable Supreme Court appointment trivia:

• In total, the Senate rejected 12 U.S. Supreme Court nominees. They included appointees of Reagan, Nixon (2), Hoover, Cleveland (2), Grant, Buchanan, Polk, Tyler, Madison, and Washington.

• The only president to serve a full-term who did not have a chance to make a Supreme Court appointment was Jimmy Carter. William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, who served partial terms before their deaths while in office, made no appointments. Andrew Johnson, who also served a partial term, made one appointment but no action was taken on it.

• The one-term president who made the most confirmed high court appointments was William Howard Taft – 6.

• President John Tyler compiled the worst presidential Supreme Court appointment record. Within 13 months, he made 9 nominations to the Court and only one was confirmed. Tyler’s appointments were to fill two vacancies, and they were used up on 5 men.

• The president who placed the most members on the Court was Washington, at 10. Of course, Washington had the honor of filling the original court with its first 6 members.

• Franklin Roosevelt, who won confirmation of 100 percent of his 9 appointees, compiled the best presidential Supreme Court batting average for a large number of appointments. Although he was responsible for one less Supreme Court Justice than Washington, Roosevelt’s confirmation percentage was better than Washington’s, who made 14 appointments –10 were confirmed, two declined (they did that sort of thing in those days), one withdrew and one was rejected. Let’s not forget, though, that unlike other presidents, FDR was elected four times serving over 12 years.

Dr. Ron Faucheux President 
Clarus Research Group