Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0006-7398-839X

Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

4-2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Eric Helland

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2026 James H Cullers

Abstract

This paper examines whether the 2013 Senate filibuster reform–the so-called "nuclear option"–changed the ideological composition of federal judicial nominees and whether that change translated into different confirmation outcomes. Using ideology scores from the Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections (DIME) matched to a dataset of all federal judicial nominees from 2000 to 2024, we separate the judicial selection process into two stages: presidential nomination and Senate confirmation. At the nomination stage, we find that post-2013 nominees were approximately 71% more likely to be ideologically extreme by pre-reform standards, a large and statistically significant shift consistent with presidents responding to a weakened confirmation constraint by nominating more ideologically distant candidates. At the confirmation stage, we find no evidence that the Senate adjusted its gatekeeping behavior in response. Ideological extremity had no significant effect on confirmation likelihood, and the interaction between extremity and the post-reform period is consistently insignificant. These findings suggest that the filibuster's constraining effect on judicial appointments operated primarily through anticipated threat at the nomination stage rather than through direct screening at the confirmation stage.

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