Book Review

Canada and the United States

Selecting a Supreme Court justice is a two-step process: there is the nomination phase and then the confirmation phase. What receives journalistic and scholarly attention is usually the latter. Indeed, most recent research has sought to explain how the rise of divided government, the changing role of the media, and the growing presence of interest groups have led to increasingly more bitter and openly political confirmation battles in the Senate. To wit, the controversies surrounding the failed nomination of Robert H. Bork in 1987, or the successful nomination of Clarence M. Thomas in 1991. Much less is known, however, about the process by which presidents come to name a nominee. Why are particular candidates chosen over others possessing similar or even superior professional and/or political qualifications? David Alistair Yalof provides answers to this question. Meticulously researched and superbly written, Yalof's book tells us more about presidential decision making during the nomination process than any previous study. It will undoubtedly become a seminal work on this subject.

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Relying on evidence from presidential papers and interviews with former presidents, attorneys general, and other presidential advisors, Yalof systematically compares the selection practices of nine presidents, Harry S. Truman through Bill Clinton (Jimmy Carter, who made no Supreme Court nominations, is omitted). He concludes that modern presidents, while varying in style and process for selecting nominees, have generally failed to make effective use of the growing resources at their command during the selection process.

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