Synopses & Reviews
Nemacheck... gives a rigorously tested, ambitiouslycomprehensive study that is a valuable contribution to president--Courtstudies. -- ChoiceDiggingdeep into the archival records of presidents from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush, Christine Nemacheck has produced a creative, fascinating, and insightful treatmentof how presidents select their Supreme Court nominees. Nemacheck is the first tooffer a systematic investigation of the political and institutional dynamics thatunderlie the White House's selection of nominees for the Court. Her account ishistorically nuanced and analytically sharp -- a must-read for anyone who caresabout the past and future of the nation's highest court. -- Sarah A.Binder, The Brookings Institution
Strategic Selection is essential reading foranyone with an interest in the selection of Supreme Court justices. ProfessorNemacheck extensively mines the presidential papers of ten presidents and draws onthem to provide numerous fascinating examples.... This is a book to savor -- awonderful achievement -- Sheldon Goldman, University of MassachusettsAmherst
StrategicSelection is full of interesting stories about how presidentsselect nominees, but rather than these stories' being the goal of Nemacheck'sanalysis, they are used to motivate a more systematic and analytical understandingof the president's choice. In reading this book we learn not only who is on eachpresident's short list but also how presidents develop these lists, what roleCongress plays in that process, and what factors impel presidents to choose onenominee rather than others. The result is one of the best books on the selection ofSupreme Court nominees that I've read. -- Charles R. Shipan, University ofMichigan
Christine L. Nemacheck is AssociateProfessor in the Department of Government at the College of William andMary.
Constitutionalism andDemocracy
Synopsis
The process by which presidents decide whom to nominate to fillSupreme Court vacancies is obviously of far-ranging importance, particularly becausethe vast majority of nominees are eventually confirmed. But why is one individualselected from among a pool of presumably qualified candidates? InStrategic Selection: Presidential Nomination of Supreme CourtJustices from Herbert Hoover through George W. Bush, ChristineNemacheck makes heavy use of presidential papers to reconstruct the politics ofnominee selection from Herbert Hoover's appointment of Charles Evan Hughes in 1930through President George W. Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito in 2005. Bringing tolight firsthand evidence of selection politics and of the influence of politicalactors, such as members of Congress and presidential advisors, from the initialstages of formulating a short list through the president's final selection of anominee, Nemacheck constructs a theoretical framework that allows her to assess thefactors impacting a president's selection process.
Much work onSupreme Court nominations focuses on struggles over confirmation, or is heavilybased on anecdotal material and posits the idiosyncratic natureof the selection process; in contrast, StrategicSelection points to systematic patterns in judicial selection.Nemacheck argues that although presidents try to maximize their ideologicalpreferences and minimize uncertainty about nominees' conduct once they areconfirmed, institutional factors that change over time, such as divided governmentand the institutionalism of the presidency, shape and constrain their choices. Byrevealing the pattern of strategic action, which she argues is visible from theearliest stages of the selection process, Nemacheck takes us a long way towardunderstanding this critically important part of our politicalsystem.