ABSTRACT
Scholars with a broad range of substantive interests and methodological approaches seek to answer questions about judicial selection processes and outcomes. This chapter offers an overview of the selection process and reviews formative and recent work on presidents’ choices of nominees and Senate consideration of nominees to the Supreme Court and to the lower federal courts. I focus particular attention on recent studies that consider the stability of findings from foundational studies, that leverage rule changes and advances in measurement to evaluate novel hypotheses, and that encourage theoretical refinement of existing theories of judicial selection. I conclude by considering the capacity of presidents to reshape the lower federal courts.
