The first history of the eight Jewish men and women who have served or who currently serve as justices of the Supreme Court

The process of appointing Supreme Court Justices has undergone changes over two centuries, but its most basic feature -- the sharing of power between the President and Senate -- has remained unchanged. To receive a lifetime appointment to the Court, a candidate must first be nominated by the President and then confirmed by the Senate. An important role also has come to be played midway in the process (after the President selects, but before the Senate considers) by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The book provides information on the amount of time taken to act on all Supreme Court nominations occurring between 1900 and the present. It focuses on the actual amounts of time that Presidents and the Senate have taken to act (as opposed to the elapsed time between official points in the process). This book focuses on when the Senate became aware of the President's selection (e.g., via a public announcement by the President).

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)

The selection of federal judges constitutes one of the more significant legacies of any president; the choices of Lyndon Baines Johnson affected important social policies for decades. This book explores the process of making judicial appointments, examining how judges were selected during Johnson's administration and the president's own participation in the process. Appointment of Judges: The Johnson Presidency is the first in-depth study of the judicial selection process in the Johnson years and is one of the few books that has analyzed any individual president's process. Based on sources in the archives of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and correspondence from senators, party officials, Justice Department officers, the American Bar Association, Supreme Court justices, and the candidates themselves, the book is an important exploration of a significant aspect of presidential power. The author shows that Johnson recognized the great impact for social and economic policy the judiciary could have in America and sought out judges who shared his vision of the Great Society. More than any previous president since William Howard Taft, Johnson took an active personal role in setting up the criteria for choosing judges and in many cases participated in decisions on individual nominees. The president utilized the resources of the White House, the Department of Justice, other agencies, and private individuals to identify judicial candidates who met criteria of compatible policy perspective, excellent legal qualifications, political or judicial experience, youth, and ethnic diversity. The book notes how the criteria and judicial selection process evolved over time and how it operated during the transitions between Kennedy and Johnson and between Johnson and Nixon.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Supreme Court nominations were driven by presidents, senators, and some legal community elites. Many nominations were quick processes with little Senate deliberation, minimal publicity and almost no public involvement. Today, however, confirmation takes 81 days on average-Justice Antonin Scalia's former seat has already taken much longer to fill-and it is typically a media spectacle. How did the Supreme Court nomination process become so public and so nakedly political? What forces led to the current high-stakes status of the process? How could we implement reforms to improve the process? In Supreme Democracy: The End of Elitism in the Supreme Court Nominations, Richard Davis, an eminent scholar of American politics and the courts, traces the history of nominations from the early republic to the present. He examines the component parts of the nomination process one by one: the presidential nomination stage, the confirmation management process, the role of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the increasing involvement over time of interest groups, the news media, and public opinion. The most dramatic development, however, has been the democratization of politics. Davis delves into the constitutional underpinnings of the nomination process and its traditional form before describing a more democratic process that has emerged in the past half century. He details the struggle over image-making between supporters and opponents intended to influence the news media and public opinion. Most importantly, he provides a thorough examination of whether or not increasing democracy always produces better governance, and a better Court. Not only an authoritative analysis of the Supreme Court nomination process from the founding era to the present, Supreme Democracy will be an essential guide to all of the protracted nomination battles yet to come.