CHAPTER 24 THE FEDERAL COURT SYSTEM:JUDGING CASES 569 本百OWTE心NDED STATES COMPARES Judicial Appointment legislative branches,which most European democracies. U.S.courts are highly thrusts the judiciary into the Judgeships there tend to be political by comparison with middle of political conflicts. career positions.Individuals the courts of most other U.S.courts have no choice are appointed to the judiciary democracies.First,U.S.courts but to act politically.It at an early age and then operate within a common-law should not be surprising, work their way up the tradition,which makes then,that federal judges and judicial ladder largely on the judge-made law (through justices are appointed basis of seniority.Partisan precedent)a part of the legal through an overtly political politics does not play a large code.Many democracies have process in which partisan role in appointment and a civil-law tradition,in which views and activities are major promotion,partly because the nearly all law is defined by considerations.Many federal courts themselves are less legislative statutes.Second, judges,particularly at the political than their U.S. because U.S.courts operate district level,have no counterparts.By tradition, in a constitutional system of significant prior judicial European judges see their job divided power,they are experience and no claim to as the strict interpretation of required to rule on conflicts special legal talent or statutes,not the creative between state and nation or training. application of them. between the executive and The pattern is different in consideration in these appointments:a senator from the state in which a vacancy has arisen is normally given a say in the nomination if the senator is of the same party as the president.16 Although the president does not become as personally involved in selecting lower-court nominees as in naming potential Supreme Court justices,lower- court appointments are collectively a significant factor in the impact of a president's administration.Reagan was able to fill more than 300 vacancies in district and appellate courts(compared with three Supreme Court openings), which,as we noted earlier,constituted about half of all judgeships at those levels.The Senate is more likely to confirm a president's lower-court nominees than his Supreme court nominees.Of Reagan's lower-court nominees,only one, Daniel Mannion,the son of the founder of the ultraconservative John Birch Society,was strongly opposed in the Senate.Mannion's critics maintained that he was unsuitable because he held extreme legal views and lacked the ability and experience expected of a federal appellate judge.Nevertheless,he was confirmed by a margin of one vote. The ABA's Committee on the Federal Judiciary can play a key role in lower- court appointments.If the ABA committee unanimously approves a nominee, the Senate Judiciary Committee is not likely to examine the appointment ex- haustively.However,when some members of the ABA's committee have reser- vations about a nominee,as was the case with Mannion,the Senate Judiciary Committee tends to investigate the president's choice more thoroughly. JUSTICES AND JUDGES AS POLITICAL OFFICIALS In comparing the Supreme Court with the U.S.Senate,where he had served before his appointment to the Court,Justice Harold Burton said that it was the Stephen L.Wasby,The Supreme Court in the Federal Judicial System,2d ed.(New York:Holt, Rinehart and Winston,1984),75