Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8kt4b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-16T16:42:02.675Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Unchained Succubus: A Queer New Institutional Analysis of U.S. Supreme Court Nomination Hearings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2017

Adam M. McMahon
Adam M. McMahon*
Affiliation:
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Modern Supreme Court nomination hearings are contentious political events, as evidenced by the four held during the 109th and 111th Congresses to confirm John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Senators appear to raise suspicion of nominees purposefully through their questioning during Judiciary Committee hearings, connecting the label of “judicial restraint” with candidates who are male, white, straight, and prone to “reason.” Appointees thought to embody the feminine, nonwhite, queer, and emotional practices of “judicial activism” to offer a contrast. This dichotomous construction has made debates during the nomination process destructively reductive. A paradox thus emerges: by ignoring the importance of descriptive representation, the identity of potential justices to the Supreme Court becomes one of the most salient issues during the hearings; subsequently, this has resulted in senators using cues to create a caricature or “straw man” of nominees belonging to one or more minority groups in order to weaken and discredit otherwise qualified jurists and achieve a party “win” against the White House.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 683 - 709
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Burgess, Susan. 1999. “Queer New Institutionalism: Notes on the Naked Power Organ in Mainstream Constitutional Theory and Law.” In The Supreme Court in American Politics: New Institutionalist Interpretations, ed. Gillman, Howard and Clayton, Cornell W.. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Comiskey, Michael. 2004. Seeking Justices: The Judging of Supreme Court Nominees. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Connell, R. W., and Messerschmidt, James W.. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.” Gender and Society 19 (6): 829–59.Google Scholar
Crawford, Katherine. 2006. “Privilege, Possibility, and Perversion: Rethinking the Study of Early Modern Sexuality.” The Journal of Modern History 78 (2): 412–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1998. “A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Law and Politics.” In The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique, 3rd ed., ed. Kairys, David. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Donaldson, Mike. 1993. “What Is Hegemonic Masculinity?” Theory and Society 22 (5): 643–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Escobar-Lemmon, Maria C., Hoekstra, Valerie, Kang, Alice, and Kittilson, Miki Caul. 2016. “Just the Facts? Media Coverage of Female and Male High Court Appointees in Five Democracies.” Politics & Gender 12 (2): 254–74.Google Scholar
Farganis, Dion, and Wedeking, Justin. 2011. “‘No Hints, No Forecasts, No Previews’: An Empirical Analysis of Supreme Court Nominee Candor from Harlan to Kagan.” Law & Society Review 45 (3): 525–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Craig. 2009. “An Intellectual History of Judicial Activism.” Emory Law Journal 58 (5): 1195–1263.Google Scholar
Grossberg, Michael. 1990. “Institutionalizing Masculinity: The Law as a Masculine Profession.” In Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, ed. Carnes, Mark C. and Griffen, Clyde. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hearn, Jeff. 2004. “From Hegemonic Masculinity to the Hegemony of Men.” Feminist Theory 5 (1): 49–72.Google Scholar
Kenney, Sally Jane. 2013. Gender and Justice: Why Women in the Judiciary Really Matter. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Maltese, John Anthony. 1995. The Selling of Supreme Court Nominees. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Mayhew, David R. [1974] 2006. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mott, Margaret. 1998. “The Rule of Faith over Reason: The Role of the Inquisition in Iberia and New Spain.” Journal of Church and State 40 (1): 57–81.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sotomayor, Sonia. 2002. “A Latina Judge's Voice.” Berkeley La Raza Law Journal 13 (1): 87–93.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. 2005. Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of John G. Roberts, Jr. to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 109th Cong., 1st sess., September 12–15.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. 2006. Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 109th Cong., 2nd sess., January 9–13.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. 2009. Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of Hon. Sonia Sotomayor, to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 111th Cong., 1st sess., July 13–16.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. 2010. The Nomination of Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 111th Cong., 2nd sess., June 28–July 1, 2010.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

McMahon supplementary material

Online Abstract

Download McMahon supplementary material(File)
File 14.3 KB