Judicial Choices

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Judicial Choices

Supreme Court conformations, much like everything else in politics and life, changed over the years. Conformations grew from insignificant and routine appointments to vital and painstakingly prolonged trials, because of the changes in the political parties and institutions. The parties found the
Supreme Court to be a tool for increasing their power, which caused an increased interest in conformations. The change in the Senate to less hierarchical institution played part to the strategy of nomination for the president. The court played the role of power for the parties, through its liberal or conservative decisions. In Judicial Choices, Mark Silverstein explains the changes in the conformations by examining the changes in the
Democratic party, Republican party, Senate, and the power of the judiciary.

Conformations affected political parties a great deal because they created new constituency and showed a dominance of power. The lose of the
Democratic party's hegemony caused it to find new methods of furthering its agenda. Prior to the 1960s, the Democratic party maintained control of the electorate with an overwhelming percentage.1 The New Deal produced interest from a "mass constituency" for the Democratic party because of the social programs. Many white southern democrats became republicans because of the increased number of blacks in the Democratic party. Many white union members and Catholics also left the party because they no longer thought of themselves as the working middle class. "The disorder in the party produced among other things a new attention to the staffing of the federal judiciary."2 Because of the lose in constituency, the Democratic party no longer had control of the presidency so it needed to find other means to further its agenda. The supreme court was that other method as displayed by the Warren Court after deciding liberal opinions like Roe v. Wade. The conformations of judges became essential in this aspect to the Democrats in order to keep liberals on the court. The Republican party wanted to gain the New Right as part of its constituency. The New Right had very conservative views and it was against the liberal agenda of the Warren Court. Nixon campaigned against the court not his opponent for the preside...

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... the Supreme Court the power to declare acts void through constitutional interpretation. In the twentieth century, the court has not changed in terms of its power of deciding cases. It has on the other hand changed in terms of who is represented on the court, liberals or conservatives.
Representation plays a key role in the conformations of justices and the change in difficulty of the conformations.

The parties seek power through Supreme Court conformations. "Political power in the United States is a function of constituency."3 Democrats had an immensely large constituency. When it decreased to a less substantial size,
Democrats used the Supreme Court to pursue their agenda as a means of a show of power instead of a "mass constituency." Republicans used the Supreme Court for power by increasing its constituency through political campaigns against liberal a Supreme Court. This battle over power and the new unpredictable
Senate caused Supreme Court conformations to be vital, strategic, and difficult.

Footnotes

1 Mark Silverstein, Judicious Choices, (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994), p.
76.

2 Ibid., p. 87.

3 Ibid., p. 34.

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