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American Politics Research, Vol. 31, No. 2, 107-137 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/1532673X02250288

Presidential Success Through Appointments To The United States Courts Of Appeals

Ashlyn Kuersten

Western Michigan University

Donald Songer

University of South Carolina

An enduring legacy for any president is achieved by appointing judges with similar policy preferences who then maintain those policy preferences during their tenure on the bench and long after leaving office. This process provides one of the few democratic checks on the judiciary. Some authors demonstrate that in the areas of social and economic policy, Supreme Court justices’ policy votes are concordant with their appointing presidents over time. We explore whether presidents are as successful at the courts of appeals level and find that they are. We also explore the influences on presidential success in nominating judges to these courts who then vote in concordance with their policy preferences; we find that the presence of a home-state senator of the president’s party substantially constrains presidential success. However, neither presidents’ appointment strategies, presidential popularity, nor the party composition of the Senate affected the degree of concordance between presidential policy preferences and judicial voting records.

Key Words: judicial decision making • presidential success • courts of appeals • presidential nomination • judicial policy making


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