568 PART SIX APPOINTED OFFICIALS Sandra Day O'Connor is sworn in as the first and only female Supreme Court justice in 1981. O'Connor has tended to side with the Court's conservatives (Sygma) One group that always takes a stand on Supreme Court nominees is the American Bar Association (ABA).Its Committee on the Federal Judiciary investigates each nominee and assesses his or her qualifications for appoint- ment to the Supreme Court.This evaluation is less meaningful than it might be, however,because the ABA committee has never judged a nominee to be not qualified-not even G.Harrold Carswell,an undistinguished and perhaps racially biased federal judge whom the Senate refused,51-45,to confirm in 1970.Carswell's qualifications were so weak that one of his Senate supporters inadvertently contributed to his defeat by offering the now-infamous"medioc- rity defense":"There are a lot of mediocre judges and people in Congress," Nebraska's Senator Roman Hruska said,"and they are entitled to a little representation [on the Supreme Court],aren't they?" Within the Senate,a key body is the Judiciary Committee,whose members have responsibility for conducting hearings on judicial nominees and recom- mending their confirmation or rejection by the full Senate.Nearly 20 percent of wore aukissues t,sce presidential nominees have been rejected by the Senate on grounds of judicial qualification,political views,personal ethics,or partisanship.Most of the 1a1f) rejections of nominees in the country's history occurred before 1900,and ethe main reason.Today a nominee and ethical credentials is less likely to be blocked for partisan reasons alone.An exception was Robert Bork,whose rejection in 1987 was founded on strong opposition from Senate Democrats who disagreed with his judicial philosophy. ⑦ Lower-Court Nominees The president normally gives the deputy attorney general the task of screening (L) potential nominees for lower-court judgeships.Senatorial courtesy is also a Quoted in Lawrence Baum,The Supreme Court(Washington,D.C.:Congressional Quarterly Press, 1981).37. For a study of lower-court appointments,see Harold W.Chase,Federal Judges:The Appointing Process(Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press,1972)