Supreme Court Decisions Influenced

While the president may wish to select nominees by the most likeminded criteria there must be moderation to make it more likely that candidate will make it through the rest of the process. A hostile Congress could derail the process. Congressional confirmation is highly dependent on whether the committee feels that the nominee can be fair regardless of their political affiliations and philosophies to even bring the nomination to a vote. Likewise a blemish on the background could call into question the nomination. The media had a field day with the nomination process for Justice Clarence Thomas over his alleged sexual harassment of a past employee. Some still debate whether this particular nomination should have been pulled for cause based on the allegations alone (Woodward & Armstrong, 2011). Similarly, the nominations of the first black justice, the first female justice, and the first female Hispanic justice all met with great scrutiny. The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (2014) studied the nominations that failed. 159 people have been nominated; 12 nominations were rejected. However, 24 nominees were simply postponed, or actively encouraged to withdraw. Of the rejections 60% occurred when the majority of the senators were