Speed of Presidential and Senate Actions on Supreme Court Nominations, 1900-2010

R. Sam Garrett
Analyst in American National Government

Denis Steven Rutkus
Specialist on the Federal Judiciary

The speed with which appointments to the Supreme Court move through various stages in the nomination-and-confirmation process is often of great interest not only to all parties directly involved, but, as well, to the nation as a whole. This report provides information on the amount of time taken to act on all Supreme Court nominations occurring between 1900 and the present. It focuses on the actual amounts of time that Presidents and the Senate have taken to act (as opposed to the elapsed time between official points in the process). For example, rather than starting the nomination clock with the official notification of the President of a forthcoming vacancy, this report focuses on when the President first learned of a Justice's intention to leave the Court (e.g., via a private conversation with the outgoing Justice), or received word that a sitting Justice had died. Likewise, rather than starting the confirmation clock with the transmission of the official nomination to the Senate, this report focuses on when the Senate became aware of the President's selection (e.g., via a public announcement by the President). 

The data indicate that the entire nomination-and-confirmation process (from when the President first learned of a vacancy to final Senate action) has generally taken almost twice as long for nominees after 1980 than for nominees in the previous 80 years. From 1900 to 1980, the entire process took a median of 59 days; from 1981 through 2010, the process took a median of 113 days. Although Presidents after 1980 have moved more quickly than their predecessors in announcing nominees after learning of vacancies (a median of 19.5 days compared with 34 days before 1980), the Senate portion of the process (i.e., from the nomination announcement to final Senate action) appears to take much longer than before (a median of 84 days from 1981 through 2009, compared with 17 days from 1900 through 1980). Notably, the amount of time between the nomination announcement and first Judiciary Committee hearing has almost quadrupled—from a median of 12.5 days (1900-1980) to 49 days (1981-2010). 

President Obama learned of another prospective vacancy on April 9, 2010. On May 10, 2010, President Obama announced he would nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens. From June 30 to July 1, 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee held four days of hearings on the nomination, and on July 20, voted 13-6 to report the nomination to the Senate. On August 3, 2010, the Senate began its consideration of the nomination. The Senate confirmed Kagan as the nation's 112th Supreme Court Justice on August 5 by a 63-37 vote. The overall time for the Kagan appointment process was slightly longer than for other recent nominations. The entire period for presidential selection and Senate consideration and action on the 2009 Sonia Sotomayor nomination, for example, lasted 97 days, compared with 118 days for the Kagan nomination. Nonetheless, although the Kagan nomination took longer to move through the process than did the Sotomayor nomination, the total Kagan timetable was similar to those of other nominations since 1981. In fact, including the Kagan timetable data raised the median number of days for the entire process by only a day and a half—to 113 days, compared with 111.5 days for all Supreme Court nominations between 1981 and 2009.


Date of Report: August 6, 2010
Number of Pages: 53
Order Number: RL33118
Price: $29.95

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