9/30/2014

For Coast-to-Coast AM listeners: information on "Dumbing Down the Courts"

Reviews and debates on my book Dumbing Down the Courts is available here.

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4/05/2014

Obama has more federal judges confirmed than George Bush

Obama not only has more federal judges confirmed, but his judges are much more liberal than Bush's were conservative.  The confirmations represent a real change in the federal bench.  From Politico:
Over the course of his presidency so far, Obama’s nominated 301 judges and gotten 237 confirmed. By this point in his presidency, Bush had nominated 267 judges and had 234 of them confirmed.As of April 4, Obama has gotten 44 circuit court judges and 191 district court judges confirmed. As of April 4, 2006, Bush had 43 circuit court and 189 district court judges confirmed. . . .
Obama has thus appointed 25 percent of the 179 circuit court judges and 28 percent of 677 district court judges.  Because Democrats can confirm anyone they want, the number of nominations is probably a better measure of Obama's impact and that means he will soon have about 35 percent of the federal bench (301/856).  He is clearly on track to appoint over half of the circuit and district court judges.

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1/13/2014

New piece on judicial confirmations at Cato Unbound

The piece that I have at Cato Unbound starts this way:
Judges exert a large and growing role in our lives.  The cases they decide cover everything that we do.  Can the government ban the sale or rental of violent video games to minors? Does proving discrimination against a few female employees working for Wal-Mart constitute proof that Wal-Mart discriminated against all its 1.3 million female employees?  Does the federal government have the power to determine who is a minister? Is carbon dioxide, part of the very air that we breathe out, a pollutant that the EPA can regulate? Can someone who brutally rapes a child receive the death penalty? Is the government able to use GPS devices to monitor citizens without securing a court order?  Who can get married to whom?  Can unions mandate that employees pay dues that go to political campaigns?  
The list could go on.  Those are just a few of the countless issues handled by federal judges over the last half dozen years. 
Judicial confirmations have become much more contentious over time.  Yet there has been little study of what personal characteristics make some judges less confirmable than others. Who are the nominees that make it through the confirmation process? Are they the brightest people who have the most detailed and sophisticated knowledge of the law? Are the most successful lower court judges also the most likely to get promoted to serve on higher courts? 
Think that attending a top university and graduating at the top of the class is the key to your success? Not if you’re headed for a federal judgeship. . . .

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12/11/2013

Appearance on Lou Dobb's show to discuss "Intelligence a liability in the judicial system?"


The interview with Lou on Fox Business can be obtained here.
This interview is from September 19, 2013, but it has only now been put up on Fox Business's website.

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12/07/2013

Review of "Dumbing Down the Courts" by Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection

The review of my new book can be seen here.  The review starts this way:
Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off the Bench” (2013) is the most recent of Dr. John Lott Jr.’s excellent books applying economics to better understand the societal dynamics around controversial issues. Gun owners will be most familiar with his past work on the defensive uses of force by lawfully armed citizens (“More Guns, Less Crime”). 
In “Dumbing Down the Courts” Dr. Lott examines how political forces are increasingly driving the federal courts to be staffed by judges (and justices) who are less intellectually capable than their predecessors. 
In short, his hypothesis — supported by data on more than 1,500 federal court nominees — is that the smarter, more respected (by their legal peers), and more academically talented a candidate for a federal court, the longer the confirmation process and the less likely confirmation will be successful. 
Indeed, this reality has become so widely accepted on an anecdotal level that many of the most promising candidates for federal judgeships simply decline to accept even consideration for such an appointment. Dr. Lott uses rigorously analyzed data to move this discussion beyond mere anecdote. . . .

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11/22/2013

Appearance on Mike Huckabee's radio show to discuss the "nuclear option" and "Dumbing Down the Courts"

My appearance on Mike Huckabee's radio show to discuss the "nuclear option" is available here.

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11/21/2013

Senate Democrats point to number of filibusters, but the real key is confirmation rates and Obama was doing much better than Bush


The figure is from the NY Times (click figure to make it larger).  As I noted in my op-ed in today's New York Post:
Nor do the confirmation rates bare out Obama’s concerns. Of all his circuit court nominations during his first term, the vast majority, 85 percent, have now been confirmed. Bush got only 72 percent of his nominees confirmed. In fact, a couple of the openings on the DC Circuit court are only available because Democrats refused to confirm Bush’s nominees. . . .
Indeed, my book "Dumbing Down the Courts" shows that you have to go back to the Reagan administration to find an administration with as high a confirmation rate for Circuit court nominees as Obama.

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10/20/2013

New piece at Politico: The dumbing down of America's judges

My piece at Politico starts this way:
Think that attending a top university and graduating at the top of the class is the key to your success? Not if you’re headed for a federal judgeship. In fact, today the most accomplished candidates for the bench are the most likely to be rejected. And this phenomenon has only gotten worse with the quality of America’s judges in marked decline. 
The evidence of so-called dumbing down is striking: Tracking federal judge appointments over the past four decades, I found that graduates of one of U.S. News and World Report’s top 10 law schools who also served on their school’s law review had a 30 percent lower confirmation rate than their peers who neither went to top law schools nor did particularly well. Looking at all the nominations from the Jimmy Carter through George W. Bush administrations, I also found that confirmation took about 65 percent longer for the first group — and 158 percent longer for students at top law schools who distinguished themselves further by getting clerkships on circuit courts and then the Supreme Court. On top of that, a federal judge whose opinions were cited 20 percent more often than their peers faced roughly a 60 percent longer confirmation process. 
So why are America’s best and brightest lawyers having such a hard time getting to the bench? A helpful analogy is jury selection. A few years ago, Greg Mankiw, chairman of Harvard University’s economics department, was called for jury duty. . . . .

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Appearance on C-SPAN to talk about "Dumbing Down the Courts," applying economics to understanding judicial confirmations

The video that runs about an hour is available here.  The C-SPAN intro is not completely accurate so you might want to skip the first 30 seconds.  I would have rewritten it as this:
John Lott talked about his book, Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off the Bench, in which he argues that partisan politicians don’t like to confirm smart judges from the other political party because they’re afraid that smart judges have the ability to influence other judges.   In his book, he says that judges who graduated in the top 10 percent of their law classes have much longer confirmation processes than judges who don’t. He spoke at an event hosted by the Orange County Federalist Society.

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10/19/2013

C-SPAN2 showing my talk on "Dumbing Down the Court"


"Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off the Bench" will be shown twice this weekend on CSPAN2.

Saturday, October 19th at 11pm (ET)
Sunday, October 20th at 3:45pm (ET)

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Media Matters gets judicial confirmations wrong

In its latest broadside against me, Media Matters attacks my Fox News column this week on judicial confirmations.  
But As Lott himself acknowledges, numerous analyses (including one by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service) have shown that President Obama's "rhetoric" is true -- his nominees have been blocked at unprecedented levels. Lott dismisses these studies by highly reputable sources because supposedly their "numbers are fundamentally flawed,"  a bold claim from a source whose research on gun violence has been repeatedly and seriously discredited. . . .
Ironically, Media Matters attacks my calculations but doesn't explain how my calculations were done, how they compared to the other studies that both I and they cite, and, most importantly,  why the method used in the other studies is preferable.  Unlike, Media Matters' name calling, I tried to explain the different approaches and why my approach was preferable.
But, these numbers are fundamentally flawed.
These studies don't look at what finally happens to nominees, only what happens at some arbitrary cut off date, such as last fall or at the end of a president's first term.
In reality, many of the longest confirmation battles involve nominations made during a president's first term and not finished until some time during his second term.
A president’s decision to make nominations late in a congressional cycle can also strongly influence the results. . . . 
Does Media Matters think that it is wrong to see what the final outcome is for nominees?  Apparently so, but no explanation is offered for why that is the case.  Does Media Matters think that it is wrong to take into account that Obama has been making his nominations relatively lated in the congressional cycle?  Apparently so, but again no explanation is offered.  No discussion is offered for why my arguments are wrong.

Finally, let me know that I have previously responded to the attack that I am "a source whose research on gun violence has been repeatedly and seriously discredited."

For the "repeatedly" claim see the response available here.
For the "seriously discredited" claim see the response available here.

There really isn't much else to respond to here.   I have no expectation that Media Matters will post my comments nor will they respond to what I write here, just at they have ignored my past posts on their "repeatedly" and "seriously discredited" attacks.  Presumably they just want to protect their readers from knowing that there is a response.

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10/16/2013

Federalist Society Podcast: Dumbing Down the Courts


Dumbing Down the Courts - Podcast
Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group Podcast
September 27, 2013
Curt LeveyJohn R. Lott Jr.Dean A. Reuter
What has caused the increased battles over judicial confirmations?  Which nominees have had the most difficult confirmations? Using the largest, most detailed data set on judicial confirmations ever assembled, a new book, Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges off the Bench, shows that it is the smartest/most potentially influential nominees who have had by the far the most difficult time getting confirmed.
Featuring:
  • Mr. Curt Levey, President and Executive Director, The Committee for Justice
  • Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., Author, of Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges off the Bench
  • Moderator: Dean Reuter, Vice President and Director of Practice Groups, The Federalist Society

Audio is available here, click on the next line.
  Dumbing Down the Courts - MP3
Running Time: 1:04:40

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10/13/2013

Great review of "Dumbing Down the Courts" by John Fund at National Review

It was very nice of John Fund to write such a nice review of my new book at National Review.  Parts of it include:
John Lott, an economist who has written thought-provoking books on everything from gun control to the federal budget, says the pitched battles over court nominations are having real-world consequences. He argues that our federal courts are being intellectually degraded as politicians in both parties try to keep the brightest and most articulate lawyers from becoming judges. . . .
It is ironic that as the federal government has grown bigger, it has become “dumber” in finding solutions to the problems it tries to address. And as Lott shows, the federal judges who are supposed to oversee that vast expansion of power are becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution. 

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10/09/2013

Talk on Thursday at Orange County, California Federalist Society about "Dumbing Down the Courts"

The information on the event is available here.
When: Thursday, October 10, 2013. 11:30 a.m. (registration), 12:00 pm (lunch)
Where1st Floor Conference Room, 2040 Main Street, Irvine, CA 92614. Parking validated-please bring your parking ticket to the lunch for validation.

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9/29/2013

Interview on Alan Colmes' radio show



Economist John R. Lott Jr. dives into the gun debate and talks about his new book "Dumbing Down the Courts" (video available here).

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9/27/2013

"Sotomayor, Kagan ‘dumbing down’ Supreme Court"

From the Daily Caller:
Courts are being dumbed down because politicians are trying to keep the smartest and most persuasive judges off the bench, argues conservative economist John Lott in his recently released book, ”Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Justices Off the Bench.” 
“While confirmations have been getting tougher for all the nominees, smarter, more influential nominees have had the hardest time getting confirmed,” Lott  told The Daily Caller in an interview about his book. “There is a simple reason for this. Judges who understand the law and are articulate may be able to convince other judges hearing cases to change how they vote. They may also write opinions that influence other judges around the country.” 
Lott, who also authored the best-selling “More Guns, Less Crime,” says the statistical record bears out his claim. . . .

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9/26/2013

Excerpt from new book "Dumbing Down the Courts" at Fox News

An excerpt from "Dumbing Down the Courts" is available here.

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9/22/2013

Are politics dumbing down America's courts?



Tucker Carlson interviewed me on Fox & Friends on Saturday morning about "Dumbing Down the Courts."

This is also pretty neat: "As seen on the show."


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9/21/2013

Are politics dumbing down America's courts?: Tucker Carlson interviews me about "Dumbing Down the Courts"

Speaking with Dom Giordano on WPHT about Gun Free Zones and "Dumbing Down the Courts"

A audio of my interview is available here.

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