Abstract: Building upon Poole and Rosenthal’s NOMINATE technique and Kalt and Zupan’s residualization approach, I seek to disentangle the influences of constituency interests, party and ideology on the votes of MPs in the famous Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. I argue that while the Conservative party shared a distinct ideology, it was also a coalition of two interests-based alliances. The non-Peelite Conservatives represented mostly (protectionist oriented) agricultural districts while the Peelites represented districts with more free trade leaning interests. Before 1846, Peelites voted according to a general Conservative ideology, but in 1846 an abrupt change occurred: the pivotal Peelites appear to have eschewed Conservative party unity and their own personal ideology in favour more of the preferences of their constituents. Repeal appears to have gained passage as these MPs switched from voting more as trustees to voting more as delegates.

Abstract: Measures of political ideology are central to a broad range of political science scholarship. However, despite extensive evaluation of the relative characteristics of vote-based ideology measures, little scholarship examines their validity independent of legislator behavior. Ideological validity is overlooked because all existing measures are action based. To address this gap, this article applies an instrumental-variables technique called FILTER to assess the validity of two important measures of legislator ideology: NOMINATE and interest-group ratings. The technique is also applied to investigate whether the measured action-based ideology suffers from agenda bias. The results show that the measures produce valid estimates of legislator ideology. Moreover, FILTER offers an important alternative to existing action-based measures of ideology that might be inappropriate for use in some settings, such as when the dependent variable being studied is also action based.

Abstract: On February 1, 2001, John Ashcroft was sworn in as Attorney General of the United States. As the head of the Department of Justice, Ashcroft took an oath to ensure that the laws were faithfully executed. As a Senator, Ashcroft had voted against many of the laws that he was now supposed to enforce. He had suggested a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, but he was now to enforce Roe v. Wade (1973). He had voted for opening protected areas to resource exploitation, but he was now to enforce environmental regulations. Ashcroft had given an interview to Southern Partisan magazine ("Senator Ashcroft," 1998) and a speech at Bob Jones University (Ashcroft, 1999), both of which had come under fire for allegedly racist and discriminatory stances, but was now supposed to oversee civil rights enforcement. It seemed that his past views were out of line with these laws. Yet, the Senate confirmed Ashcroft to enforce them. Ashcroft was not confirmed in ignorance of these tensions. In fact, a barrage of questions from Democrats on the panel marked the confirmation hearing and supporting arguments from the Republicans bolstered Ashcroft. The confirmation hearing seems to have fulfilled the role demanded by the Constitution. Although the President is given leeway, the Constitution does not grant unlimited authority in naming Cabinet officers. Article Two states that the President "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint ... public Ministers and Consuls ... whose Appointment are not herein otherwise provided for" (Art 2. [section] 2). While the President is allowed to choose the Cabinet, the Senate has been willing to use its powers to block some appointees. Recent examples include John Tower for Secretary of Defense under George H. W. Bush and Zoe Baird for Attorney General under Bill Clinton. Ashcroft could have joined them. Ashcroft, however, was confirmed. The vote was close. 58 Senators voted to confirm Ashcroft, 42 did not. Yet, before the vote was taken, several major newspapers had concluded that the hearings were moot; Ashcroft had enough support to gain confirmation (see Dewar & Eggen, 2001; Hedges, 2001; Jackson, 2001; Johnston, 2001; Kaufman, 2001; Sherman 2001, for example). The Republicans, had there been a strict party-line vote, would have been able to confirm Ashcroft. When Georgia Senator Zell Miller announced his support for Ashcroft, the Republicans knew they would win without using Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaking powers. Despite the fact that the Republicans were guaranteed to win, the Democrats did not give in. Rather than simply allowing the Ashcroft confirmation, the Democrats used this forum to express their disapproval. In the tradition suggested by Madison, Hamilton, & Jay (1989), they used the factional divisions within the Senate to express the minority view. And, as noted by Calhoun (1992) in the debates over slavery, the expression of minority views in the Senate is important as it prepares the ground for political opposition in the future when the minority will be decisive in the final outcome. The least optimal option for the opposition is capitulation. Although the Democrats could cave in and agree not to oppose the nomination, they would lose any possible advantages to be gotten by voicing disagreement. Alternatively, the 42 votes held by the Democrats could be used as a powerful weapon, the filibuster. The filibuster is a bludgeon; it stops all debate on everything when used. Filibustering, however, is also a "least useful" option for the Democrats as it stops all business and increases the appearance of partisanship. Rather than capitulating or filibustering, the use of the hearing to voice opposition allowed the Democrats to express their disapproval of nominating someone as conservative as Ashcroft in such an important position. Yet, they had to avoid the view that they were voting on nothing but the basis of Ashcroft's "Republican" label. …

Abstract: One of the most important consequences of the 2002 midterm congressional election will be its effect on federal judicial appointments. With the same political party controlling the White House and the Senate for the first time in eight years, President George W. Bush should have an easier time securing Senate confirmation of his federal judges than he did during his first two years in office. (1) As of January 1, 2003, the president had sixty vacancies to fill on the federal bench, including twenty-five on the courts of appeals. (2) There was also much speculation that Bush would have the opportunity to appoint at least one justice to the Supreme Court in 2003. (3) The last Supreme Court vacancy had occurred in 1994 when Harry Blackmun resigned and President Bill Clinton appointed Stephen Breyer. With more than eight years since that vacancy, the nation faced the longest stretch without an opening on the Supreme Court since 1823. That stretch had been dominated by "divided government." Democrats controlled the White House while Republicans controlled both houses of Congress from 1995 through 2000. Republicans controlled the White House and the House of Representatives while Democrats controlled the Senate from 2001 through 2002. (4) Those eight years of all but continuous divided government were part of an emerging pattern. From 1969 through 2002, the same political party had controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for only six out of twenty-four years. (5) The same party controlled both the Senate and the White House for only twelve of those twenty-four. (6) Although divided government has been the norm since World War II, unified government had been the norm before that. (7) Divided control of the White House and the Senate has significant ramifications for judicial appointments because presidents only have the authority under the constitution to nominate individuals to fill those posts. Appointment only comes with the "advice and consent" of the Senate. The recent period of divided government has been accompanied by a trend toward polarized politics in the United States. (8) Political scientists Jon Bond and Richard Fleisher have documented the decline in the number of "partisan nonconformists" in Congress (which they define as "moderate and cross-pressured Democrats and Republicans"). (9) As a result, the parties in Congress have become more polarized, leading to a dramatic increase in partisan voting. The trend began in the House of Representatives after the 1982 midterm elections. The trend did not emerge in the Senate until some years later, but by the mid 1990s the Senate (as measured by party votes) was even more partisan than the House. (10) Another political scientist, Gary Jacobson, has noted that this has been accompanied by an increase in partisanship among the electorate: Party loyalty has increased, ticket splitting has decreased, and the ideological gap between members of the two parties has widened. (11) All of this has helped to increase the likelihood of confirmation battles over judicial nominees. It also produced "confirmation gridlock"--a dramatic slowdown of the confirmation process for federal judges--begun by the Republicans after President Clinton's re-election in 1996 and perpetuated by the Democrats in the first two years of the Bush administration. Polarized politics led to confirmation battles and confirmation gridlock because judicial appointments were thought by participants in the process to have a potentially profound impact on public policy. White House aide Tom Charles Huston made this clear in a 1969 memorandum to President Richard Nixon. Huston noted that judicial nominations were perhaps the least considered aspect of Presidential power.... In approaching the bench, it is necessary to remember that the decision as to who will make the decisions affects what decisions will be made. That is, the role the judiciary will play in different historical eras depends as much on the type of men who become judges as it does on the constitutional rules which appear to [guide them]. …

Abstract: Abstract According to Bartlett and Bartlett (1999), the status of this predatory African turtle in Florida is not known with certainty, as it is so secretive and aquatic that its presence can be easily overlooked. It is believed to be only tenuously established in a single man-made lake in Dade County, into which it was reputedly released by a local animal dealer. The turtles, said to be of the nominate race, have apparently not spread outside the lake, despite its connections to permanently flooded nearby canals.