Honors Program Theses
Award/Availability
Open Access Honors Program Thesis
First Advisor
Donna Hoffman
Abstract
Supreme Court confirmation politics has reached a high-water mark between the nominations for Elena Kagan in 2010 and Neil Gorsuch in 2017. The court since 2010 is now ideologically divided along party lines for the first time in its history thanks to Republican presidents nominating more ideological justices, beginning in the 1980’s, in response to a more activist Warren court. These developments have taken shape in tandem with increased coverage of the hearings through television and various forms of media. This intensely partisan and political process in which the public is highly engaged offers the perfect stage for Senators to posture or engage in other political grandstanding tactics. They do this by peppering their questions with partisan propaganda and stances in hopes of maintaining the loyalty of their constituents. The question-asking behavior of Senators has been studied in numerous research projects but the rest of Senatorial rhetoric like posturing or statement making and dialogue has not. This research will attempt to study Senator behavior during the modern confirmation hearings to determine how much Senate posturing and dialogue occurs. The results have shown that out-party Senators (those Senators of the opposing party of the nominating president) are engaged in much higher levels of dialogue especially after 2016. Each party also changes the number of questions they ask based on whether they are out-party or in-party (those Senators of the same party of the nominating president). This study’s results provide a more recent analysis of the salient confirmation process and add to the literature on confirmation hearings and Senator’s behavior during them.
Year of Submission
2023
Department
Department of Political Science
University Honors Designation
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors
Date Original
12-2023
Object Description
1 PDF file (43 pages)
Copyright
©2023 Alex Perrin
Recommended Citation
Perrin, Alex, "Senatorial Behavior in Recent Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings" (2023). Honors Program Theses. 909.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/hpt/909
