Judicial Nominations

One of the reactions to Justice Kennedy's retirement that I saw pointed out that Republicans have nominated more justices to the Supreme Court in the last two or three decades despite the fact that the Democrats have won the popular vote (although not necessarily the presidency) more often in that time.

So I decided to go ahead and figure out how many nominations were made by each party, going back to the New Deal and FDR. It wasn't really that hard; Wikipedia's lists of Supreme Court justices and US presidents provided all the information I need.

It turns out the Democrats have it, albeit only barely; they nominated 21 justices since 1937, whereas the Republicans nominated 20. (Technically 19; I'm counting President Trump's impending nomination to replace Justice Kennedy.) Of course, just under half of the Democratic nominations came during FDR's very long time in office; remove his nine from the list, and the Republicans win easily.

In light of that, graphs like this one which show the median Supreme Court justice being on the conservative side more often than not over the time period in question aren't surprising. That's reassuring in some ways, since it implies that liberals can see results they like out of the Supreme Court even if things generally trend conservative... but that's still a very faint silver lining.