Publications

Analyzing the Rhetoric of Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

Published in Journal of Law and Courts, 2023

Supreme Court confirmation hearings place the often-reclusive institution in the public spotlight and afford members of the Senate Judiciary Committee the ability to pursue important personal and party goals. I construct and evaluate a measure of rhetorical sentiment that considers the positive and negative behaviors of committee members during Supreme Court confirmation hearings between 1971 and 2020. While some observers have pointed to the evolving dynamics of confirmation hearings as being the result of key inflection points, I find that these events alone do not explain rhetorical behaviors. Instead, my results suggest that rhetorical behaviors have been predominately mediated by structures of party control and the balance of interbranch political power since at least the 1970s. I conclude by noting how these behaviors can further deteriorate the public’s perceptions that the Court remains insulated from the contentious political environment.

Recommended citation: Truscott, J. (2023). Analyzing the Rhetoric of Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings. Journal of Law and Courts, 1-22. doi:10.1017/jlc.2023.2

The Supreme Spectacle: An Analysis of Public Attendance at the Supreme Court

Published in Justice System Journal, 2022

While many are aware that the Supreme Court allocates seats for the public to view oral arguments, substantive analyses that have measured the motivations for attendance are lacking. I analyze who attends oral arguments using a descriptive approach with a novel dataset of public attendance at Supreme Court oral arguments during the 2019 term. A concurrent assessment of interviews conducted on argument days illustrates notable differences among the motivations of prospective attendees. I conclude by noting that although the linkage between latent case salience and the demand for admission to arguments is not neatly discernable, attendance at the Supreme Court offers an interesting divergence from perceptions of attendance in a traditional courtroom setting.

Recommended citation: Jake S. Truscott (2022) The Supreme Spectacle: An Analysis of Public Attendance at the Supreme Court, Justice System Journal, 43:3, 470-481, DOI: 10.1080/0098261X.2022.2107964