This study has as its central focus an investigation into the existence and nature of the apprenticeship norm in the United States Senate. Over its history, the Senate has been frequently portrayed as a body guided by rather restrictive, informal rules of behavior for its members. The apprenticeship norm has been identified by some as the most important of these rules; contributing to the Senate's centralized and conservative policy orientation. More recently, however, it has been argued that the Senate has become a more decentralized and fragmented body within which the apprenticeship norm is no longer important. The present study offers for the first time an empirical test of the existence and nature of the apprenticeship norm for selected sessions of the Senate for the time period 1940-1976. The frequency of performance of various types of floor activity by members of the Senate were correlated and regressed with years of service in the Senate as well as with other background characteristics of Senators to test both for the existence of the apprenticeship norm as well as to identify its relevance relative to other potential explanations of Senate floor behavior. Several definitions of apprenticeship were advanced and tested.

The Pentagon career of Charles E. Wilson, President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense from 1953-1957, is a neglected, yet important, field of study for studentsof the Eisenhower Presidency. Therefore, a study of Wilson's controversial tenure as Secretary of Defense is necessary for at least three reasons. First, Wilson served as Secretary of Defense for four and a half years, more than twice as long as any of his predecessors. Only Robert McNamara, who administered the Defense Department from 1961-1967, served longer than Wilson as the chief Pentagon official. Furthermore, Wilson became the Defense Department's civilian leader at a time when the agency was in its infancy.. His longevity as Secretary of Defense enabled him to make a significant impact upon the government's largest operation.Second, Wilson left a considerable store of personal papers, which are conveniently arranged at Anderson College in Anderson, Indiana. A serious examination of those materials gives one an additional measure of insight into the workings and concern of the Eisenhower Administration.Third, Wilson deserves study because he was a major figure in an important Administration. He has, however, been overlooked by virtually every chronicler of the Eisenhower Presidency. The prevailing view of Wilson maintains that he was an able administrator in the automobile industry, but woefully miscast as a political figure. That interpretation may not be totally wrong, but it is incomplete.More significantly, a study of Wilson enables the historian to challenge two views of the orthodox interpretation of the Eisenhower years. The first view maintains that the figures in the Eisenhower Cabinet were dull, unimaginative representatives of the business community. Indeed, one writer characterized the President and his advisers as "the bland leading the bland." That statement is misleading, at least in reference to Wilson.Charles E. Wilson was a wealthy industrialist, but he was hardly bland. He was many things; robust, blunt, energetic, sometimes simplistic, sometimes politically unskillful, but never bland. Furthermore, he possessed a down-to-earth intelligence which enabled him to direct the government's largest agency for almost a half-decade.A second view of the orthodox interpretation contends that the Eisenhower years were largely devoid of partisanship and a sense of political purpose. That, too, is misleading, especially regarding the issue of national defense. An examination of the debates over defense policy during those years reveals a high degree of partisanship with Wilson Persistently defending the Administration programs while the political opposition consistently sought to alter them. Furthermore, Wilson and his Democratic critics in the Senate were hardy rivals, with influential Democrats calling for Wilson's resignation at regular intervals. Wilson's encounters with Richard Russell, Lyndon B. Johnson, Stuart Symington and others may have lacked the drama of Harry Truman's lambasting of the "do-nothing, good-for-nothing" 80th congress during the 1948 presidential campaign. Yet the encounter between Wilson and his Senate critics were genuinely partisan and both Administration and Congress fought tooth-and-nail for political victory.I should like to state the purpose of this study. It is not an attempt at a biography of Wilson or even a summary of his career at the Pentagon. Instead, I have tried to examine the theme of conflict between Wilson and his Senate critics. The emphasis, and hopefully not the bias, is on Wilson's role as the Secretary of Defense in advocating his policies before skeptical groups of Senators. Hopefully, the study will succeed in a larger objective of shedding additional light on the inner workings of the Eisenhower Administration.

This dissertation is motivated by a straightforward question about a drastic change to American politics: why has the process of staffing the circuit courts of appeals, once so agreeable and bipartisan, seemed to have descended into almost complete partisan bitterness? Across the entire time series, these are, after all, the same courts endowed with the same power of judicial review. And when the process of staffing them was harmonious, the courts were nevertheless deciding the fate of major, controversial policies of national importance---such as the New Deal in the 1930s and civil rights in the 1950s---just as they do today. Yes, many other aspects of American politics have changed through the decades. But what could possibly explain such a complete reversal of course? I argue that this change, toward divisiveness and partisan warfare, is actually about the judiciary itself and the substantive manner by which the nominees are thought of---namely, the entry of judicial ideology into the debate through the innovation of circuit judges being evaluated on ideological terms. While taken for granted as central today, any ideological assessment of circuit court nominees, and in particular viewing them as having a comprehensive judicial philosophy as opposed to just a position on singular pressing issue of the day, was almost nonexistent for generations. Its entry into the process was piecemeal and somewhat complicated, but it eventually came to dominate and irrevocably polarize the business of staffing the courts. I argue that this was the key factor that leaves us where we are today. Broadly speaking, I consider the contributions and particular strengths of my dissertation, relative to previous scholarship, to be threefold. First is my argument and accompanying analyses which put the crucial (and severely understudied) role of judicial ideology front and center. Second, I analyze the entire lifespan of the circuit courts, whereas the previous scholarship looks only at (often relatively brief) subsets of their history. As far as I know, this is the first study to systematically look at all circuit court nominations from the establishment of these courts in 1891 through the modern era. Third, I collect and analyze a great deal of new data. In particular I focus on systematically utilizing extensive archival resources and build two original data sets related to the Senate's public and private evaluation of judicial nominees; and while there is certainly a qualitative aspect to much of this research, I also synthesize and make sense of it with quantitative analysis. In chapter 1, I explain the puzzle motivating this research, elaborate my argument, and lay out the theoretical, methodological, and data collection contributions of this dissertation. I also review the literature and describe the three existing schools of thought. In chapter 2, I give an overview of the history of the circuit courts from their founding to the present. In this data-heavy chapter, I examine multiple metrics individually, and using several of these I build a robust composite score of divisiveness for each nominee ever made to the circuit courts, from 1891 through 2020. As far as I know this has never been done before. I find overwhelming evidence that the process has fundamentally changed and become more divisive. In chapter 3, I dig more deeply into the timing of this change, and begin to explore how and why it happened---and begin my attempt at demonstrating how the evaluation of judicial ideology is central to this change. To do this I examine a massive data source that has never been utilized: the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for all nominees. With both qualitative and quantitative analysis, I show that the evaluation of nominees has varied widely over time. Prior to 1979, nominees were evaluated almost exclusively based on their qualifications, with ideology examined only under special circumstances, which I explore in depth. In this time period, ideological scrutiny predicted a contentious confirmation process, providing evidence for my argument that ideological evaluation drove divisiveness. Also in this chapter, I analyze the post-1979 transition to the routine ideological evaluation that permanently altered the confirmation process. I find that Republicans and comprehensive judicial philosophies both played a key role. In chapter 4, I examine the senators' private evaluation of nominees, in part to serve as a check on the validity of my earlier data analysis and also to see if there is any difference between the senators' public and private goals in relation to the judiciary. To do this, I build an original data set of over 1000 internal letters and memoranda from senators, by searching the archival records of nearly every president since Benjamin Harrison as well as over 150 senators. Studying this material qualitatively and quantitatively, the findings here largely align with the analysis of the public committee hearings: for much of history senators were concerned mainly about qualifications, with ideological concern rare and under special circumstances, but eventually ideology came to be the predominant concern which ended the consensual and placid process. This immense historical record also brings to light additional senatorial goals, such as ensuring residents of their own state as well as personal friends obtain judicial appointments. In chapter 5, I focus in on the post-1979 era and I find that the more ideologically distant a nominee is from the Senate, the more divisive the confirmation process is. This provides evidence that the process is defined by ideology related to the nominees, not garden variety polarization of the system. In chapter 6, I conclude, trying to synthesize all of my findings as well as offer some thoughts on areas of future research.

This thesis traces the growth the United States Senate's role in the Supreme Court confirmation process from the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1789 to the nomination of Robert H. Bork in 1987. Beginning with an examination of the intellectual origins of the Advice and Consent Clause of the United States Constitution, the thesis goes on to demonstrate that the Senate's role in the confirmation process has expanded well beyond the boundaries established by the Framers of the Constitution, and that this has resulted in a usurpation of the presidential power of appointment. The thesis concludes by arguing that the growth of the Senate's role in the confirmation process has harmed the integrity of the judicial branch by infringing upon the separation of powers, specifically demonstrating how the modern confirmation process has threatened to undermine the independence of the Judiciary.

In a time of laissez-faire government, monopolistic businesses and political debauchery, William Andrews Clark played a significant role in the developing West, achieving financial success rivaling Jay Gould, George Hearst, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan. Clark built railroads, ranches, factories, utilities, and developed timber and water resources, and was internationally known as a capitalist, philanthropist and art collector. Nonetheless, Clark is unjustly remembered for his bitter twelve-year political battle with copper baron Marcus Daly that culminated in a scandalous senatorial election in January 1899. The subsequent investigation was a judicial travesty based on personal hatred and illicit tactics. Clark's political career had national implications and lasting consequences. His enemies shaped his legacy, and for one hundred years historians have unquestioningly accepted it.

It is a well known fact that in recent years the United States Senate has increasingly become more critical of presidential appointments to the Supreme Court branch. In this thesis the author has undertaken an intensive study of the several cases between 1916 and 1930 in which, serious opposition developed to the confirmation of Supreme Court appointments. Within this period fall the unsuccessful fights against Justices Brandeis,Taft, Butler, Stone,and Hughes,and the successful opposition to Judge Parker. In each case an effort has been made to bring out the forces and arguments operative on either side of the controversy, and to establish the fundamental motivation underlying these several manifestations of senatorial discontent. The intensive study of this question has been limited to the period from 1916 to 1930. As a preliminary background, however chapter one has been devoted to a rapid survey of the confirmation struggles arising over Supreme Court appointments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and in the concluding chapter, brief reference has been made to the subsequent record of Chief Justice Hughes, to illustrate the false premise upon which some of the struggles have been founded. In the concluding lines,the author has attempted to state what he believes to be the only justifiable grounds for future attacks upon presidential nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States.

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The Senate Munitions Committee of 1934-1936, chaired by Gerald Nye of North Dakota, provided the first critical examination of America's modern military establishment. The committee approached its task guided by the optimism of the progressive Social Gospel and the idealism of earlier times, but in the middle of the munitions inquiry the nation turned to new values represented in Reinhold Niebuhr's realism and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Second New Deal. By 1936, the committee found its views out of place in a nation pursuing a new course and in a world threatening to break out in war. Realist historians writing in the cold war period (1945-1990) closely linked the munitions inquiry to isolationism and created a one-dimensional history in which the committee chased evil "merchants of death." The only book-length study of the munitions investigation, John Wiltz's In Search of Peace, published in 1963, provided a realist interpretation. The munitions inquiry went beyond the merchants of death in its analysis of the post-World War I American military establishment. A better understanding emerges when the investigation is considered not only within an isolationist framework, but also as part of the intellectual, cultural, and political history of the interwar years. In particular, Franklin Roosevelt's political use of the investigation becomes apparent. Sources used include the committee's hearings, exhibits, and reports, the Gerald Nye Papers, the Franklin Roosevelt Papers, the Cordell Hull Papers, the R. Walton Moore Papers, the Henry Stimson Papers, the Homer Cummings Diaries, and the State Department's decimal files.

This thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter examines the impact of judicial discretion and left-digit bias on criminal sentencing outcomes. Judicial discretion allows judges to make nuanced decisions, taking into account details of legal cases that are not directly covered by law. However, judicial discretion can also expose behavioral biases and lead to irrational decision-making. I test for the existence of a particular behavioral bias: age-based left-digit bias. Specifically, I use a regression discontinuity design to test for changes in sentencing decisions occurring on an offender's 20th birthday using data on sentencing decisions from the state of Pennsylvania. I find that an offender sentenced just after his/her 20th birthday is 3.5 percentage points more likely to be sentenced to incarceration than an offender sentenced just before his/her 20th birthday. I test for evidence of conscious mechanisms underlying this effect and find no such evidence, leaving an unconscious bias as the best available explanation. Chapter two examines the impact of highly publicized police killings of black individuals on the racial gap in birth outcomes. Police killings of Black Americans are increasingly being met with significant media coverage and public response, including civil unrest. Given the frequency with which these events occur, it is vital to understand both their direct and indirect impacts. Using national birth certificate data and an event study design, I test for the impact of high-profile police-involved killings of Black Americans on racial disparities in maternal stress levels and birth outcomes. I find a large, statistically significant, and persistent increase in gestational hypertension of Black mothers relative to White mothers, strongly indicating an increase in the racial gap in maternal stress following these high-profile killings. I find limited evidence of an accompanying effect on the racial gap in birth outcomes. However, many existing papers similarly find no impacts of maternal stress on birth outcomes while simultaneously finding significant impacts on later-life outcomes, leaving room for additional future work based on these findings. How does the content of public communication by elected representatives change in response to highly salient, politically polarizing events? In Chapter 3, I examine this question using the text of tweets from members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, an n-gram text regression model and sentiment analysis alogorithms, and an event study design focused on mass shootings in the U.S. Observable effects on communication are concentrated on the day of and the day following a mass shooting. Republican members of Congress exhibit a reduced tweet frequency relative to Democratic members of Congress in the immediate aftermath of a shooting, while Democratic members of Congress speak with a more clearly differentiated Democratic vocabulary. Members from both parties speak with a more negative vocabulary. With Republicans collectively disengaging and Democrats collectively highlighting their partisan identification, this may suggest that Democrats are taking advantage of an opportunity for a political and/or policy win while Republicans in the same period are choosing to avoid additional political and/or policy losses.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This research project proposes to try to isolate and measure the influence of “regime fatigue” on gubernatorial elections and senatorial elections in the United States where there is no incumbent running. The research begins with a review of the negativity effect and its potential influence on schema-based impression forming by voters. Applicable literature on the topics of social clustering and homophily is then highlighted as it provides the vehicle through which the negativity effect disseminates across collections of socially-clustered individuals and ultimately contributes to changing tides of public opinion despite the fact that the political party identification can remain relatively fixed in the aggregate.