ABSTRACT
A review of the historical development of the president's Article II appointment power shows that the capacity for both presidential discretion and leadership to operate has grown. By attending to the partisan dynamics of the institutional context of the federal appointment process, a president reduces the political uncertainty as to the confirmation prospects of his/her putative nominees. The concept of measurable judicial ideology, the methodological foundation of the attitudinal model of judging, simply means that judges can be arrayed along a left–right continuum by observing the patterns of judicial voting in cases. Judicial ideology—its expression and its expected performance—is also deeply contingent upon an environment of extra-court, inter-court, and intra-court constraints. Lower federal court judges are simply more constrained by professional, hierarchical rule-following norms, like adhering to Supreme Court and circuit precedents on the application of statutes and the meaning of the Constitution. Political regimes entrenched through judicial appointments can outlast or post-date that regime's electoral representation or existence.
