The Political Determinants of Public Support for Obstruction of Supreme Court Nominees

Abstract

Abstract Despite increased political attention to instances of legislative obstruction in recent years, little is known about the public’s attitudes toward these procedural techniques. I evaluate these attitudes in the context of the last two decades of nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court with three complementary analyses. In the first, nationally representative survey evidence reveals an overriding political dimension to Americans’ attitudes over the use of tactics to delay the confirmation process. The president’s copartisans express considerably higher levels of opposition to delayed consideration of a nominee than individuals politically opposed to the president. In the second and third, evidence from observational surveys and a survey experiment shows that these attitudes vary depending on the type of the obstruction under consideration, with Americans less supportive of the use of forms of obstruction that entirely preclude procedural consideration of a nominee, such as refusing to hold hearings, than more established methods that do not, like the filibuster or document requests. These findings reveal that the American public has internalized the political stakes of judicial nominations and suggest that obstruction may have electoral consequences in an era of extreme polarization.