⇒ Judges are nominated by the President and confirmed by a simple majority by the Senate but the procedure is more complicated than that

⇒ The President usually establishes a team to research possible nominees and they usually take advice from the American Bar Association on whether the nominee has the appropriate legal qualifications to stand as a judge (the ABA questioned the credibility of Bush snr's nominee Clarence Thomas)

⇒ Before a full vote in the Senate, the nominee is expected to complete a questionnaire and appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (Harriet Miers sent incomplete answers to her questionnaire, which hindered her chances)

⇒ The committee then takes a vote. The closeness of this vote usually determines whether the full Senate vote will also be close. (The judiciary committee split 11 – 9 for Gorsuch. The full vote was also close, 54 – 45, compared to the vote on Roberts- 78 – 22)

⇒ Previous experience - the vast majority of SCOTUS justices are nominated from the federal court of appeals, the court one tier below the SCOTUS. 8 of the 9 justices have served on circuit courts

⇒ Political philosophy - Presidents look for judges with similar political views (Trump nominated Gorsuch and Obama nominated Kagan and Sotomayor)

⇒ Ethnicity - traditionally, SCOTUS justices have tended to be white and male, and from ivy league schools such as Harvard. However, recent Presidents have sought to create greater balance (Obama appointed Sotomayor as the first Hispanic-American to the court)

⇒ Loyalty to the President - Eisenhower nominated Warren to ensure that the latter would not stand against the former in the 1952 presidential election. (Bush nominated Miers in part due to her closeness to him)

⇒ Likelihood of confirmation - Obama looked for as moderate of a judge as he could when he nominated Merrick Garland (who ultimately did not get through), and Trump opted for Neil Gorsuch to appeal the Republican majority in the Senate

⇒ Interest group pressure

• National organisation for Women lead a campaign against Robert Bork, one of the "outstanding jurists and scholars of his generation"
• Gorsuch was reportedly supported by $10 million in dark money, cash from anonymous sources who donate group fronting as a charity

⇒ Media pressure

• $15 million TV ad campaign was run against Bork
• Clarence Thomas was undermined by allegations of sexual harassment. The eventual SCOTUS justice said of his confirmation process "this is a circus. It's a national disgrace... it is a high-tech lynching"

⇒ An increase in partisanship

• Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, was not even granted a hearing by the Republican-led Senate
• They justified this decision by claiming that an appointment ought not to be made in an election (Thurmond rule), despite the fact that Republicans had previously praised Garland's experience and found that they agreed with many of his decisions on criminal justice

⇒ Also see our notes on:

• Functions
• Key Policy Areas
• Key Cases
• Political or Judicial
• Checks and Constraints
• Strict and Loose Constructionist