The Supreme Court Confirmation Process and Its Implications

In recent history, there has been a trend of increasing partisan polarization throughout most of the American political system. Some of the impacts of this polarization are obvious; however, there is reason to believe that we miss some of the indirect effects of polarization. Accompanying the trend of increased polarization has been an increase in the contentiousness of the Supreme Court confirmation process. I believe that these two trends are related. Furthermore, I argue that these trends have an impact on judicial behavior. This is an issue worth exploring, since the Supreme Court is the most isolated branch of the federal government. The Constitution structured the Supreme Court to ensure that it was as isolated as possible from short-term political pressures and interests. This study attempts to show how it may be possible that those goals are no longer being fully achieved. My first hypothesis in this study is that increases in partisan polarization are a direct cause of the increase in the level of contention during the confirmation process. I then hypothesize that the more contention a justice faces during his or her confirmation process, the more ideologically extreme that justice will then vote on the bench. This means that a nominee appointed by a Republican president will tend to vote even more conservatively than was anticipated following a contentious confirmation process, and vice versa for Democratic appointees. In order to test these hypotheses, I developed a data set for every Supreme Court nominee dating back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt¿s appointments (1937). With this data set, I ran a series of regression models to analyze these relationships. Statistically speaking, the results support my first hypothesis in a fairly robust manner. My regression results for my second hypothesis indicate that the trend I am looking for is present for Republican nominees. For Democratic nominees, the impacts are less robust. Nonetheless, as the results will show, contention during the confirmation process does seem to have some impact on judicial behavior. Following my quantitative analysis, I analyze a series of case studies. These case studies serve to provide tangible examples of these statistical trends as well as to explore what else may be going on during the confirmation process and subsequent judicial decision-making. I use Justices Stevens, Rehnquist, and Alito as the subjects for these case studies. These cases will show that the trends described above do seem to be identifiable at the level of an individual case. These studies further help to indicate other potential impacts on judicial behavior. For example, following Justice Rehnquist¿s move from Associate to Chief Justice, we see a marked change in his behavior. Overall, this study serves as a means of analyzing some of the more indirect impacts of partisan polarization in modern politics. Further, the study offers a means of exploring some of the possible constraints (both conscious and subconscious) that Supreme Court justices may feel while they decide how to cast a vote in a particular case. Given the wide-reaching implications of Supreme Court decisions, it is important to try to grasp a full view of how these decisions are made.

Reply to William B. Grant

THE UVI working group acknowledges the contribution of Vitamin D to bone health as stated in our paper. However, we concluded that an optimal level of Vitamin D for humans has not yet been established with any certainty...

Cungellela by William ‘Dura Danje’ Leisha and Shem ‘Curan Danje’ Leisha

Research background: Cungelela is an intercultural music project undertaken in collaboration with William ‘Dura Danje’ Leisha and Shem ‘Curan Danje’ Leisha. The project contributes to cultural maintenance for Australian First Nations peoples, and is informed by prior work in this area by scholars including Peter Dunbar-Hall, Chris Gibson and Karl Neuenfeldt. These existing studies have discussed the complexities of intercultural collaboration, and the types of cultural politics that are involved when Indigenous and non-Indigenous musicians and scholars work together on projects of cultural significance. Critical race theory has also informed the creative work, as a means of interpreting the implicit and explicit discourses of race that arise through intercultural creative practice. The project asked the research question, in what ways can collaborative music making contribute to intercultural understanding and support cultural maintenance for Australian First Nations people affected by the Stolen Generations? Research contribution: This project has identified that collaborative production of recorded popular music can produce shared affective, embodied and transformative forms of knowledge about the impact of the Stolen Generations on Australian First Nations peoples. Research significance: The compact disc was presented by Aunty Anne Leisha as part of an invited presentation at the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium in New Mexico, 2013. The work also formed part of a refereed conference presentation at the 2013 conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music held at the University of Oviedo, Gijon, Spain.

William James, Sciences of Mind, and Anti-imperial Discourse

In the past few decades, the humanities and social sciences have developed new methods of reorienting their conceptual frameworks in a “world without frontiers.” In this book, Bernadette M. Baker offers an innovative approach to rethinking sciences of mind as they formed at the turn of the twentieth century, via the concerns that have emerged at the turn of the twenty-first. The less-visited texts of Harvard philosopher and psychologist William James provide a window into contemporary debates over principles of toleration, anti-imperial discourse, and the nature of ethics. Baker revisits Jamesian approaches to the formation of scientific objects including the child mind, exceptional mental states, and the ghost to explore the possibilities and limits of social scientific thought dedicated to mind development and discipline formation around the construct of the West.

Group portrait at the farewell banquet for Dr. William Antopol from the laboratory staff of Mount Sinai Hospital; Ken's Chop House, New York city Portraits Groups

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Portrait of William and Charlotte Engel Levison Portraits Couples

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Dr. William Levison working at a desk Portraits Men

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Portrait of Dr. William Levison Portraits Men

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Portrait of Dr. William Levison in military uniform Portraits Men

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Group US Army military portrait including Dr. William Levison (top row, third from left); Schofield Barracks, Hawaii Portraits Groups Men

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Dr. William Levison (seated, far left) with other U.S. Army medial doctors and nurses with Christmas Tree in background Portraits Groups

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Portrait of Dr. William Levison smoking a corn pipe Portraits Men

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William Niclas standing next to the Oder River Portraits Men

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