The Politics of Appointing Catholics to the Federal Courts, 4 U
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University of St. Thomas Law Journal Volume 4 Article 4 Issue 2 Fall 2006 2006 The olitP ics of Appointing Catholics to the Federal Courts Sheldon Goldman Bluebook Citation Sheldon Goldman, The Politics of Appointing Catholics to the Federal Courts, 4 U. St. Thomas L.J. 193 (2006). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UST Research Online and the University of St. Thomas Law Journal. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ARTICLE THE POLITICS OF ApPOINTING CATHOLICS TO THE FEDERAL COURTS SHELDON GOLDMAN With the January 31, 2006 conftrmation of Samuel Alito as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, the Court has a majority con sisting of Roman Catholic justices for the ftrst time in American history. When adding the ftve Catholic and two Jewish justices, one could argue that the religion of the majority of the nation has been marginalized, in terms of representation on the nation's highest court, as never before. Does this have signiftcance other than sectarian pride? Does this provide proof that religion has become irrelevant in the selection of Supreme Court jus tices? Indeed, we can ask to what extent religion played a part in the calculus of presidents and their administrations in the selection of Supreme Court justices as well as lower federal court judges throughout the course of the history of the federal judiciary. And, if it has been part of the calculus, why? The objective of this article is to examine the appointment of Catholics to the Supreme Court and to the lower federal courts. I marshal evidence suggesting that presidents who appointed the ftrst two Catholics to the Su preme Court were not motivated by religion, but that subsequently through the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, religion was very much a concern of presidential administrations. Since the presidency of Richard Nixon, how ever, religion has returned to a largely irrelevant status. The emergence of a Catholic majority on the Supreme Court, I argue, is a result of a unique configuration of circumstances. As for the lower federal courts, although evidence for the earlier years of the United States is spotty, there is never theless the hint of somewhat of a parallel to Supreme Court appointments in the nineteenth century, with even a closer parallel in the twentieth and twenty-ftrst centuries. Part I of this Article, on presidential agendas and judicial selection, offers a theoretical framework to explain the selection of judges. Part II focuses on the Supreme Court and the appointment of Catholics from 1836 to 1932; from 1933 to 1980; and from 1981 to 2006. Part III then focuses on lower-federal-court appointments during approximately the same time 193 194 UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 4:2 periods. Part IV presents an argument explaining why policy agenda ap pointments have come to predominate judicial selection. Finally, Part V concludes that policy agenda considerations for Republicans, and partisan agenda considerations for Democrats, have resulted in the relatively large numbers of Catholics appointed to the lower federal courts. I. PRESIDENTIAL AGENDAS AND JUDICIAL SELECTION The concepts of a president's policy agenda, his partisan agenda, and his personal agenda can be useful in understanding the politics of federal judicial selection. 1 "Policy agenda" means the substantive policy goals of an administration, including what it hopes to accomplish both legislatively and administratively. By "partisan agenda," I mean the use of presidential power to achieve political results for the president or for the party by re warding either individual supporters or key elements of the president's or party's political base. And "personal agenda" here means the use of the president's appointment power to favor a personal friend or close associate. Although the policy agenda, the partisan agenda, and even the personal agenda may all be furthered at one and the same time in the person of a specific nominee, what distinguishes one type of agenda from another is presidential motivation. If the principal concern, for example, is to help party leaders, to maintain a good relationship with a senator, to resolve a party rift, to reward individual party supporters, to cater to a particular con stituency group within the party's base, or to enhance the president's repu tation and appeal, then presidential action can be seen as promoting a partisan agenda, even if there are also policy consequences. If the president is primarily concerned with the policy consequences of his appointments, then particular appointments may be considered part of the policy agenda. And if the president seeks to exercise personal patronage, those appoint ments may be considered part of a personal agenda. Of course, this conceptual scheme presents some difficulties. Motiva tion can be elusive to discover, as the motivations of administration offi cials and members of Congress in making recommendations may be different from those of the president. Moreover, presidential motives for particular appointments may be mixed, and it may be difficult to document which motive was responsible for a specific presidential appointment. Thus, these determinations must be based on reasonable inferences from the avail able evidence. When an administration's judicial appointments are primarily partisan agenda or personal-agenda actions, the policymaking activity of the courts 1. The concept of "agenda" was developed in PAUL CHARLES LIGHT, THE PRESIDENT'S AGENDA: DoMESTIC POLICY CHOICE FROM KENNEDY TO REAGAN (rev. ed. 1991), and in JOHN W. KINGDON, AGENDAS, ALTERNATIVES, AND PuBLIC POLlcms (2d ed. 1995), Agenda as applied to judicial selection is discussed in SHELDON GOLDMAN, PICKING FEDERAL JUDGES: LoWER COURT SELECTION FROM ROOSEVELT TIiROUGH REAGAN 3-4 (1997), from which this section draws. 2006] APPOINTING CATHOLICS TO THE FEDERAL COURTS 195 will not be seen as crucial to administration goals. In such cases, judicial appointments are a species of political patronage, dependent more on parti san or personal political reasons than the appointees' ideology or judicial philosophy. In contrast, an administration whose judicial appointments are driven by its policy agenda will view the courts as likely to affect the suc cess or failure of its policy goals. Hence, changes in court policy may be necessary, and an administration can be expected to use the selection pro cess to appoint those who share its ideology, given a threshold level of professional ability and accomplishment of prospective appointees. Under this conceptual scheme, the logical place for religious consider ations in judicial appointments would be under the partisan agenda of an administration. In such cases, appointments could reward part of the core constituency or attempt to attract a religious group to join the party. Such use of religious considerations in the judicial selection process, however, would be inconsistent with the prohibition of religious tests for public office in the United States Constitution? This, of course, means that evidence of religious considerations would likely not appear in the public record. It would have been unthinkable, for example, for President Dwight D. Eisen hower to announce at a news conference that he had directed his Attorney General to find "some fine, prominent Catholic to nominate" to the Su preme Court, something that Eisenhower did, in fact, privately write his Attorney General in a letter in anticipation of an opening on the Court. 3 Instead, the role of religious considerations in judicial appointments must be found in materials containing behind-the-scenes revelations. II. THE SUPREME COURT AND THE ApPOINTMENT OF CATHOLICS A. Appointments of Catholics to the Supreme Court, 1836-1932 The first appointment of a Catholic to the Supreme Court was that made by President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, to his close political asso ciate and cabinet member, Roger B. Taney. Taney came from a well-to-do Maryland political family. He joined Jackson's cabinet as Attorney General in 1831. A vigorous supporter of the President's campaign against the Sec ond Bank of the United States, Taney was nominated to be Secretary of the Treasury in 1834; the Senate, however, voted not to confirm him. The next year, Jackson nominated Taney to be an associate justice on the Supreme Court, but the Senate postponed consideration of the nomination. When Chief Justice John Marshall died in 1835, Jackson nominated Taney to that post. Taney was confirmed on March 16, 1836. 2. U.S. CONST. art. VI, cl. 3 ("no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."). 3. Letter from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Herbert Brownell, Att'y Gen. (Mar. 8, 1955), in Ann Whitman Administration Papers, Brownell, Herbert, 1955-56 (3), Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kan. [this collection hereinafter "Whitman Files"]. 196 UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 4:2 Despite the historic nature of Taney's appointment, there is nothing in the historical record to suggest that religion was a consideration in his ap pointment.4 Rather, this appointment seems to have been a policy-agenda appointment-Jackson could be confident that Taney shared his policy views. Yet, there was widespread anti-Catholic hostility during this period, and some of that spilled over into criticism of Taney's appointment.s When Taney died in 1864, he was not replaced by a Catholic, and no Catholic served on the Court for another three decades. President Grover Cleveland, another Democrat, placed the second Catholic on the Supreme Court with his 1894 appointment of Edward D. White. White was named after Cleveland's fITst two nominees were de feated in the Senate. White was a southerner from Louisiana and a fonner Confederate soldier; he was also a Democratic senator, and he was promptly confinned by a unanimous Senate.6 In 1910 White was elevated to chief justice by President William H.