This project proposes to catalog all Senatorial blue slips available in the National Archives. Under the blue slip policy, each home state senator in the United States Senate is sent a query asking for their opinion and information on any judicial nominee from their state. While the formal role of providing consent to the President's nominees to the federal courts is specified by the Constitution, senators have long played a consultative role through the use of the blue slip mechanism. Digital scans of the blue slips will be made generally available. Furthermore, this project expands existing databases on lower federal court confirmation (currently only available for nominations from 1977 to 2004) to encompass 1891 to 1976. These steps will allow comprehensive analyses of the confirmation process and how it has evolved over time, as well as investigate what factors influence the return of the blue slip. Finally, this project aims to make theoretical contributions to the study of the judiciary and intergovernmental relations. The research builds on existing theories of the confirmation process to carefully examine claims about how the norm of the blue slip affects the confirmation process.
A more complete picture of the judicial confirmation process will lead to a fuller understanding of key political players and their behavior while also addressing theoretical perspectives on how institutions evolve.
When, how, and under what conditions can individual legislators affect presidential appointments? Since the early 1900s, the senatorial norm of the blue slip has played a key role in the confirmation process of federal district and appeals court judges, and is an important aspect of the individual prerogative that characterizes senatorial behavior more broadly. The norm of the blue slip refers to the tradition that the president chooses a judicial nominee for a district or circuit court after consultation with the two senators from the home state of the judicial vacancy. We cataloging the newly available blue slips found in the files of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and offer evidence on the impact of blue slips on the confirmation process for nominees to the lower federal courts. Whereas previous work focused on the use of the blue slip as a negative tool to defeat or delay a nominee, we consider whether the blue slip functions as a positive tool to support a nominee. Additionally, we analyze the factors that contribute to an individual senator’s decision whether to support or oppose a nominee, or return a blue slip at all. We argue that blue slips served not only as an early warning flag, but also provided a means by which to secure the spoils of patronage. The positive role of the blue slips demonstrates that this device protects the individual interests of each senator within their state. Our results therefore show that the blue slip institutionalizes a slippage of democratic representation by allowing the preferences of individual senators to idiosyncratically influence presidential appointments. Our project helps clarify intergovernmental checks and balances and how relationships and norms have evolved. A more complete picture of the judicial confirmation process will lead to a fuller understanding of key political players and their behavior while also addressing theoretical perspectives on how institutions evolve. We have archived the scanned blue slips collected from the National Archives and quantitative data and is available at: http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jbox/blueslip/index.php as well as through ICPSR and DataVerse. The project directly promotes teaching and research training through the original work and through the existence of the database.
