For Coast-to-Coast AM listeners: information on "Dumbing Down the Courts"
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts
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Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts
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. . . .
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. . . .
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts, op-ed
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts
“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. . . .
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts
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.
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. . . . .
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts, op-ed
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.
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts, MediaAppearance, television
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts
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.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.
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. . . .
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts, media matters Lott, mediamatters
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts
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.
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts, JohnFund
When: Thursday, October 10, 2013. 11:30 a.m. (registration), 12:00 pm (lunch)
Where: 1st Floor Conference Room, 2040 Main Street, Irvine, CA 92614. Parking validated-please bring your parking ticket to the lunch for validation.
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts, Talks
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. . . .
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts, MediaAppearance, television
Labels: Dumbing Down the Courts, MediaAppearance, Radio