where do institutions come from? exploring the origins of the...

Where Do Institutions Come From?Exploring the Origins of the SenateBlue Slip

Sarah A. Binder, Brookings Institution and GeorgeWashington University

Perhaps the most striking feature of the Senate’s prac-tice of advice and consent today is the deferenceaccorded home state senators in reviewing presiden-tial appointments to the federal bench. Althoughthe Constitution calls for the advice and consent ofthe Senate body, informal norms of the Senateprovide home state senators with a potential veto ofnominations to fill federal judgeships within theirstates. One norm—senatorial courtesy—historicallyensured that senators would defer to the views ofthe home state senator from the president’s party.Another practice—the Senate “blue slip”—allocatesspecial procedural rights to both home state senatorsregardless of political party. A single objection from ahome state senator from either party has historicallybeen considered sufficient to defeat confirmation ofa nominee. The blue slip also allows home statesenators to influence the course of nominationsprospectively—encouraging presidents to heed thepreferences of home state senators in selecting newfederal judges.1

Why would the Senate devise a practice like theblue slip that appears today to undermine a long-standing norm of the chamber? If, as Kermit Hallsuggests, federal judgeships were historically dis-pensed as party patronage, one would hardly expect

senators to create a practice in which oppositionparty senators were allocated the same proceduralrights afforded to the president’s partisans.2 In thisarticle, I offer competing accounts of the blue slip’sorigins, and use Senate archival records to matchthe fit of the explanations to the creation of theblue slip. Although a “smoking gun” proves elusive,I find little evidence that the practice was intentionallyconstructed to undermine the influence of the presi-dent’s party over the makeup of the bench. Rather,the blue slip’s power appears to have evolved as anunintended consequence of an effort to reduceuncertainty about the prospects of confirmation forthe president’s lifetime appointments to the bench.I conclude with a brief exploration of the blue slip’simplications for our understanding of how and whypolitical institutions such as the Senate evolve. In con-trast to accounts that highlight the impact of rationalcalculation on the design of new institutions, thehistory of the blue slip suggest that unintended conse-quences may pervade the development of congres-sional rules and norms.

THE PUZZLE OF THE BLUE SLIP

Each time a president makes an appointment to thelower federal bench, the Senate refers the nomina-tion to the Senate Judiciary Committee for consider-ation. As part of the confirmation process, thepanel’s counsel sends a “blue slip” to each of thetwo home state senators for the nomination. Literallya blue sheet of paper, the blue slip asks each homestate senator for his or her opinion regarding the

I appreciate the comments, advice, and assistance of DougDion, Larry Evans, Gerald Gamm, Greg Koger, Jessica Kratz, EricLawrence, Forrest Maltzman, Alan Murphy, Molly Reynolds,Elizabeth Rybicki, Steve Smith, Mitch Sollenberger, and AshleyWillis, as well as seminar participants at Michigan State, Universityof Minnesota, Yale University, University of Wisconsin, Universityat Albany, William and Mary, Washington University, GeorgetownUniversity and Stanford University.

1. See Sheldon Goldman, Picking Federal Judges (New Haven,CT: Yale University Press, 1997); and Sarah A. Binder and ForrestMaltzman, “The Limits of Senatorial Courtesy,” Legislative StudiesQuarterly 29 (2004): 5–22.

2. Kermit Hall, The Politics of Justice: Lower Federal Judicial Selectionand the Second Party System, 1829–1961 (Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1979).

Studies in American Political Development, 21 (Spring 2007), 1–15.

# 2007 Cambridge University Press ISSN 0898-588X/07 $15.00 1

nominee. If the senator signs and returns the blue slipwith an endorsement, the senator signals his or hersupport for the nominee. If the senator returns theslip with a note objecting to the nominee or if thesenator fails to return the blue slip, the senatorsignals his or her intention to oppose the nominee.Because the Senate Judiciary Committee chair hashistorically heeded the views of the home statesenator, scholars of judicial selection have come toshare the views of Judiciary Committee staff, who in1979 argued that the blue slip was a mechanism for“institutionalizing senatorial courtesy within the[Judiciary] committee as an automatic and mechan-ical one-member veto over nominees.”3

Numerous students of judicial nominations haverelied upon this characterization of the blue slip,arguing that the blue slip institutionalized senatorialcourtesy by creating a routine practice for solicitingthe views of home state senators during the confir-mation process.4 But the blue slip did not simply insti-tutionalize senatorial courtesy: it transformed it in twoimportant ways. First, the blue slip today empowershome state senators regardless of party. Originally,senatorial courtesy had been reserved for senatorsfrom the president’s party as a means for forcingthe president to consider Senate views in allocatingpatronage.5 As Joseph Harris notes in his history ofadvice and consent, there was at best “uneven exten-sion” of the norm to opposition party senators—notsurprising given that there was no expectation thatsuch senators would be afforded the opportunity forpatronage.6

Allowing opposition party senators to weigh in onjudicial nominations is puzzling, as the blue slippotentially undercuts the privileged role of the presi-dent’s partisans in shaping the selection and confir-mation of new federal judges in their states.Moreover, the blue slip currently increases the influ-ence of the opposition party regardless of whetherparty control of the White House and Senate isunified or divided. In periods of divided control,the blue slip provides opposition party senators witha tool to block nominees.7 In periods of unifiedcontrol, opposition party senators can exploit the

blue slip to retard confirmation of nominees. Giventhe value of senatorial courtesy to home state parti-sans of the president, it seems especially puzzlingthat the blue slip would have been extended to sena-tors from both political parties.8

The blue slip transformed senatorial courtesy in asecond way as well. Senatorial courtesy is typicallyconceived of as an informal norm of deferencewithin the Senate chamber.9 In contrast, the blueslip leaves a paper trail. By creating the blue slip prac-tice, the views of home state senators became knownin writing to the Judiciary Committee chair and hispanel colleagues, and by extension to the homestate senators’ chamber colleagues. By creating aroutine paper trail of correspondence between thecommittee chair and the home state senators, theblue slip altered the flow of information—reducinguncertainty about the nominee’s confirmation pro-spects. It also reshaped senators’ expectations regard-ing the confirmation of new federal judges. Senatorscame to expect that their objections to nomineesrecorded via the blue slip would be heeded by theirchamber colleagues. In short, by creating the blueslip, senators manufactured a potential veto tool forhome state senators regardless of whether or notthey hailed from the president’s party.Perhaps not surprisingly, over the latter half of the

twentieth century, the blue slip came to be consideredas a tool that could be used by partisan foes of the pre-sident to limit his power of appointment. Its impact isseen particularly in periods of divided party control,when the opposition party controls the Senate andits committee agendas. When presidents seek toappoint new judges to the federal district and appel-late courts in a period of divided government,extreme ideological foes of the president exploit theblue slip to limit the president’s discretion—as evi-denced by the difficulty presidents have in selectingnominees when one of the home state senatorsdiffers strongly in ideological terms with the presi-dent.10 The impact of a “negative” blue slip from ahome state senator of the opposing party is also feltduring the confirmation stage. Once a nominationhas been forwarded to the Senate in a period ofdivided government, Senate action is delayed signifi-cantly if one of the opposing party’s home state sena-tors is ideologically distant from the president.11 JesseHelms’ (R-NC) success in the late 1990s in blockingPresident Bill Clinton’s appointments to the Fourth

3. Judiciary Committee Staff to Senator Kennedy, Re: senator-ial courtesy, 22 Jan. 1979, in U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judi-ciary, Selection and Confirmation of Federal Judges, Hearing. 96thCong., 1st Sess., 25 Jan. 1979, pt. 1.

4. For example, see Brannon Denning, “The ‘Blue Slip’: Enfor-cing the Norms of the Judicial Confirmation Process,” William andMary Bill of Rights Journal 19 (2001): 75–102; and Benjamin Wittes,Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).

5. See Elliott Slotnick, “Reforms in Judicial Selection: Will TheyAffect the Senate’s Role?” Judicature 64 (1980): 60–73.

6. Joseph Harris, The Advice and Consent of the Senate (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1953), 224.

7. On the pronounced effect of the blue slip in periods ofdivided government, see Binder and Maltzman, “Limits of Senator-ial Courtesy.”

8. See Michael W. Giles, Virginia A. Hettinger, and ToddPeppers, “Picking Federal Judges: A Note on Policy and PartisanSelection Agendas,” Political Research Quarterly 54 (2001): 623–41.

9. See Lewis A. Froman Jr., “Organization Theory and theExplanation of Important Characteristics of Congress,” AmericanPolitical Science Review 62 (1968): 518–26.

10. See Sarah A. Binder and Forrest Maltzman, “SenatorialDelay in Confirming Federal Judges, 1947–1998,” AmericanJournal of Political Science 46 (2002), 190–9.

11. See Binder and Maltzman, “Limits of Senatorial Courtesy.”

SARAH A. BINDER2

Circuit Court of Appeals, despite apparent superma-jority support for the nominees, attests to the powerand importance of the blue slip. Even if an oppositionparty senator only succeeds in delaying confirmationof a nominee, delay is typically consequential, as itcan keep judgeships on swing courts vacant for pro-longed periods. In short, the blue slip provides a pro-cedural tool for opposition party senators who wouldhave an incentive to make it harder for the presidentto fill vacant judgeships in their states.If the blue slip can be exploited by ideological foes

of the president and his party, particularly in periodsof divided government, why did the Senate transformsenatorial courtesy in this way? This is of course botha theoretical question about the forces that bringchange in political institutions and an empirical ques-tion about the development of advice and consentpractices in the Senate. In the following section, Iadvance four potential explanations that mightaccount for the Senate’s decision to broaden theallocation of procedural rights over judicial selection.I then turn to the historical record to uncover the cre-ation of the blue slip and to determine the fit of thecompeting accounts to the origins of this Senatepractice.

COMPETING EXPLANATIONS

Why might a procedural right be extended to sena-tors of both political parties? I suggest four alternativeaccounts, each with an eye on partisan and insti-tutional imperatives that may shape senators’ viewsabout the rules of the game. Because the fouraccounts vary along these partisan and institutionaldimensions, they each generate a different set ofpredictions about the conditions under which theblue slip might have been created.

Interparty Competition: “The Power Play”The first potential explanation relies on a view of insti-tutional choice as the outcome of short-term instru-mental action by players seeking political advantage.Under this account, changes in institutional practiceswould be the brain-child of senators seeking toincrease their leverage over the selection of judgesin their home states. Because senators from the presi-dent’s party could simply rely upon senatorialcourtesy, we would expect the blue slip to be an inven-tion of opposition party senators. And given that theopposition party would only be able to cement aninnovation in Judiciary Committee practices if theycontrolled the Senate, this account suggests thatmajority party senators in a period of divided govern-ment created the blue slip to purposefully undercutsenatorial courtesy. In short, we can think of theinvention of the blue slip as a power-grab by themajority party intended to increase the opposition

party’s leverage over appointments when it did notcontrol the White House.How then under this scenario might the blue slip

be extended to all senators? One can assume thatwhen the blue slip was first created, it was inventedby the Senate’s governing party and extended onlyto majority party members. Dealing in the president’sparty (serving as the minority party) under this scen-ario would not be rational for two reasons. First, thepresident’s partisans already benefited from thenorm of senatorial courtesy, meaning that therewould be no political cost to devising a new practicethat excluded the minority. Second, as the minorityparty, the president’s partisans would have limitedleverage to influence the adoption of new insti-tutional practices. More likely, the majority wouldhave sought to craft an institutional change that bene-fited their party’s short-term interests in influencingthe selection of federal judges. To be sure, thatsame majority party might insist on access to blueslips if it ever became the minority party in a periodof unified control (when again their party did notcontrol the White House). But if one seeks toexplain the origins of the Senate blue slip, takingseriously senators’ short-term calculations about pre-ferable rules would lead one to expect that the blueslip would be extended to opposition party senatorsserving in the majority party and would be createdin a period of divided party control.

Interparty Competition: Electoral UncertaintyIf politicians view the rules as instruments for secur-ing their immediate and short-term interests, thenone would expect them to discount significantlytheir parliamentary future when making choicesabout institutional matters. Politicians need not bequite so short-sighted, however, when forming theirpreferences about institutional arrangements. Analternative perspective might suggest that senatorsare primarily concerned with their long term parlia-mentary future in the institution when devising newparliamentary rules. Rather than viewing these rulesas instruments for securing short-term goals, senatorsmight instead view institutions as durable structuresthat cement their prospects for exercising futurecontrol.Scholars who have studied the extension of pro-

cedural rights in the House of Representatives tominority party members have found relatively littlesupport for models in which legislators alter therules in anticipation of their future parliamentarystatus.12 As Jack Knight suggests, given uncertaintyabout the future, actors are more likely to discount

12. For example, see Sarah A. Binder, Minority Rights, MajorityRule (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and DouglasDion, Turning the Legislative Thumbscrew (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 1997).

EXPLORING THE ORIGINS OF THE SENATE BLUE SLIP 3

the future, and thus make choices about institutionsbased on short-term distributional advantage.13 More-over, unless both parties can make credible commit-ments to protect such rights in the future, currentmajorities cannot count on the maintenance of thenew rights.

Still, such long-term forecasting might in fact bequite prevalent amongst senators when thinkingabout the institutions of advice and consent. Giventhe broad and lasting impact of federal judgesserving life-time terms, senators might have astrong incentive to prepare for their future parlia-mentary needs, rather than their immediate inter-ests. If so, and given a moderate level ofuncertainty about whether or how long their partywill control the Senate, we might expect majorityparty senators to agree to send blue slips to senatorsof both political parties. Extending the blue slip tothe minority party would improve the majority’sprospective influence over filling court vacanciesshould the majority lose control of the chamber.Given the importance of court appointments andgiven senators’ six-year terms, we might expect sena-tors to be more future-thinking than their counter-parts in the House.

Varying the degree to which senators might dis-count the future thus leads to two different interpret-ations based on interparty competition over the shapeof the judiciary. Although the accounts differ on howthey treat electoral uncertainty, both accounts lead usto expect that the blue slip would be created in aperiod of divided government. In the “power play”version, the majority party would create the blueslip to increase its immediate leverage over theappointment of federal judge in their states whentheir party did not control the White House. In the“electoral uncertainty” version, we would expect theblue slip to be devised in a period of divided govern-ment to guarantee the majority party future influenceover nominations should it lose control of thechamber. (In a period of unified control, majorityparty senators would have little reason to extend sena-torial courtesy to the minority party; as such a movewould undercut the majority’s influence over theselection of nominees.) Thus, both accounts arerooted in an appreciation of how partisan compe-tition in a period of divided control might structuresenators’ views about the rules of advice andconsent. But the accounts differ markedly in theway in which they invoke the shadow of the future.Discounting the future leads to a narrow crafting ofthe blue slip as a majority party veto power; focusingon a party’s longer term parliamentary future leadsto an expansive blue slip that allows all senators toweigh in on judicial nominations.

Intraparty CompetitionDisputes over the selection of judicial nomineesneed not be limited to differences between theparties. As Sheldon Goldman suggests, disagree-ments between the White House and home statesenators can arise with some regularity.14 Attimes, such disputes arise for purely politicalreasons as competing factions of a state partymay prefer different candidates to fill a vacancy.Teddy Roosevelt, for example, in making anappointment to the Seventh Circuit Court ofAppeals in 1901 took sides in a dispute betweenthe two Indiana senators (Albert Beveridge andCharles Fairbanks) who represented opposing fac-tions in the Indiana GOP and who advocatedcompeting candidates for the vacant judgeship.15

Roosevelt rejected the candidate of the senatoraligned with one of Roosevelt’s potential challen-gers, instead selecting the candidate of thesenator more closely aligned with Roosevelt.When presidents place a higher priority on judicial

nominees’ policy views, we also tend to see intrapartydisputes over nominees that arise over policyconsiderations. Disagreements between WoodrowWilson and several Midwestern Democratic senatorsarose, for example, over appointments to fill appellatecourt vacancies, when senators’ preferred candidateslacked sufficient progressive credentials.16 By recon-structing the paper trail in the papers of Wilson’sattorney general, Raymond Solomon is able to deter-mine that Wilson routinely selected the nominee withthe best public record on progressive issues, includinglabor and antitrust issues.Why might such intraparty disputes encourage

senators to devise the blue slip? Unlike the inter-party interpretations, which suggest the blue slipwas intentionally designed to bolster the oppositionparty’s influence during advice and consent, thisaccount suggests that the blue slip might havebeen intended to bolster senatorial courtesyrather than to derail it. Because intraparty disputesarise when presidents discount the advice of thehome state senators from the president’s party,the blue slip might have been the institutionalresponse of senators seeking to make the presidentmore responsive to senators’ interests. By creating aformal paper trail of senators’ views on nominees,the blue slip would have expanded the scope ofconflict over disputed nominees. Rather than con-fining the disagreement to a senator and the presi-dent’s staff, the blue slip would have been a meansfor, in E.E. Schattschneider’s terms, “socializing

13. See Jack Knight, Institutions and Social Conflict (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1992).

14. Goldman, Picking Federal Judges.15. Raymond L. Solomon, “The Politics of Appointment and

the Federal Courts’ Role in Regulating America: U.S. Courts ofAppeal Judgeships from T.R. to F.D.R.,” American Bar FoundationResearch Journal, 9 (1984): 285–344.

16. Ibid., 314–20.

SARAH A. BINDER4

conflict” over judicial vacancies.17 The blue slipmight also then be a valuable means for senatorsfrom the “wrong” state party faction to increase the visi-bility of their objections to the president’s and poten-tially the other home state senator’s nominee(s).The intraparty account of the blue slip’s origin yields

a different prediction about the timing of the blue slip’screation. Unlike the interparty accounts that lead us tosuspect that the blue slip would have been created in aperiod of divided government, the intraparty accountsuggests that the blue slip is a creation of the majorityparty under unified party control. In this case, thepresident’s partisans—in control of the chamber’s com-mittees and thus in a position to craft a new practice—would have invented the blue slip to bolster theirinfluence over the selection and confirmation of newfederal judges. By establishing a paper trail, senatorswould have invented a mechanism for announcingtheir views about the president’s nominees thus improv-ing the probability that fellow senators might be morelikely to defer to their views. Moreover, the expectationthat senators’ views would be formalized and poten-tially made public would have created a tool whichsenators might have used as leverage to encourageWhite House responsiveness to their preferred candi-dates. Granted, it would take nearly a century beforethe Judiciary committee routinely made blue slipspublic. But presidents already faced the possibilitythat home state senators would go to the floor todeclare nominees “personally obnoxious,” and thusnoting their objection to confirmation.‘Finally, under the intraparty conflict account, we

would expect the original blue slip to have beenextended only to members of the majority party. If theblue slip under this scenario would have bolstered sena-torial courtesy by strengthening the hands of senatorsfrom the president’s party, extending the blue slip tothe minority party would have made little sense. At thesame time as senators were attempting to increasetheir leverage over appointments, they might havebeen handing the opposition party a potential vetotool over those candidates. That said, majority partysenators might have reasoned that the governingmajority could simply ignore objections from the min-ority party. By this logic, extending the blue slip to theminority would offer little penalty. Of course, whenrecent majority parties in the Senate have attemptedto ignore blue slips from opposition party senators,they found themselves facing minority-party led filibus-ters against numerous appellate court nominees.18

Thus, we might expect that senators trying to improvetheir position in the advice and consent game wouldhavepreferred to limit the blue slip to themajority party.

Managing UncertaintyOf the three party-based accounts offered thus far,only one account leads us to expect that the blueslip would be extended to senators regardless oftheir party or party status. That explanation requiresthat senators’ views about desirable rules be shapeddirectly by their long-term parliamentary interests.But given doubts in the literature about the impactof such future-thinking, one might reasonablywonder about the conditions under which senators’short-term interests could motivate them to extendprocedural rights to the minority. Here, we have tothink beyond the dictates of parties and their compe-tition with the president, and think instead about howthe blue slip might have affected the handling ofnominations in the Senate chamber.Instead of conceptualizing the blue slip as a tool for

senators seeking advantage against the executivebranch, the fourth account addresses the institutionalramifications of creating the blue slip. To do so, con-sider the handling of nominations before advent ofthe blue slip. Given the informality of senatorial cour-tesy, there was no guarantee that a senator’s viewsabout a nominee would be made known early in theconfirmation process or with any regularity. More-over, given the limit of senatorial courtesy to senatorsfrom the president’s party, objections from opposi-tion party senators would potentially remainunknown to the Senate Judiciary Committee chairor the party leader before a nomination was con-sidered on the Senate floor. Given the lack of amajority cloture rule that would allow the president’sparty to block opposition to a nominee quite easilyand, given the lack of any cloture rule at all in theSenate for more than 100 years, senators seeking toblock confirmation had quite a number of tools attheir disposal—including the filibuster or otherwisedenying consent to the floor manager.The creation of the blue slip, however, forced home

state senators to go first in revealing their positionsduring the confirmation process. Through the blueslip, the views of both home state senators would beavailable in writing to the Judiciary panel chair andhis panel colleagues, and, by extension, to thehome state senators’ chamber colleagues. By creatinga routine paper trail revealing the preferences of thehome state senators—regardless of party—the blueslip altered the flow of information, thus reducinguncertainty about the nominee’s confirmationprospects. Blue slips revealing senators’ oppositionwould enable the Judiciary chair to avoid potentiallycostly legislative battles—costly to the presidentseeking to fill the bench, the president’s partyseeking to keep peace in the political family, and tothe Senate majority party seeking to protect theparty’s reputation and manage the uncertaintyinherent in legislative life. Given the potential ofnominations to trigger filibuster fights and the

17. E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist’sView of Democracy in America (New York: Holt, Reinhart, andWinston, 1960).

18. Marcia Coyle, “Awaiting Fate of the ‘Filibuster 10’,” TheNational Law Journal, 15 Nov. 2004.


potential for senators to take other legislativemeasures hostage to gain leverage against a confir-mation, a premium would be placed on reducinguncertainty about a nominee’s prospects beforeexpending resources and time on a potentially riskyappointee.

For the blue slip to reflect an innovation of commit-tee or party leaders seeking to improve their manage-ment of the Senate’s executive session, the practicewould undoubtedly have been created duringa period of unified party control. Presumablychamber leaders would primarily want to reduceuncertainty about the prospects of confirmationwhen their own party controlled the White House.Improving the predictability of confirmation is onlylikely to motivate senators with an interest in seeingtheir own party’s nominees confirmed. Given thatsenatorial courtesy would mean that most of thosenominees would be the choice of the president’s par-tisans, the blue slip only makes sense as a product ofunified government.

Thinking of the blue slip as a means of reducinguncertainty also leads us to expect that the blue slipwould be extended to members of the minorityparty during a period of unified control. By extendingthe blue slip to minority party senators, the majoritywould gain an early warning to flag contested nomi-nees—a tool that the inherited practice of senatorialcourtesy would not have routinely provided. Hadinventers of the blue slip only intended to increaseinformation flow about nominees referred to commit-tee, offering a blue slip to minority party senatorsprobably would not have been seen as creating anew procedural right for the minority. Transformationof the blue slip into a veto power for the minoritywould thus be a future and unintended consequenceof an effort to improve control of the agenda.

Origins of the Senate Blue SlipAlthough existing treatments of judicial selectionoften note the existence of the blue slip practice,few offer any insight on the reasoning behind its cre-ation or even the date it was adopted. For example,neither Joseph Harris’s 1953 treatise on senatorialcourtesy nor Harold Chase’s 1972 examination ofjudicial selection make any reference to the blueslip practice.19 In fact, among the few who have exam-ined the use of the blue slip, little is said about itsorigins. One scholar, Alan Neff, suggests that theblue slip practice was invented in the early 1950s,probably during Mississippi Democrat James East-land’s tenure as chair of the Senate Judiciary

Committee—although he provides no supporting evi-dence for this claim.20 In fact, empirical support forEastland’s role in creating the blue slip is slim. Savefor a lone reference in a 1979 Judiciary Committeestaff study, I find no evidence of Eastland’s hand inthe practice’s creation. According to that staffreport, “the blue slip has been used for over 25years, according to former committee staffmembers.”21 Simple arithmetic leads to the con-clusion that the process was created around 1954,just before Eastland took control of the committeein 1956.Coverage of judicial nominations in the New York

Times and Washington Post, however, raises doubtsabout the 1950s genesis of the blue slip. Granted,the first explicit reference to the blue slip does notappear until 1967, when Senator Jacob Javits (R-NY)held up a judicial nominee who had been recom-mended by his fellow New York senator, RobertF. Kennedy. “Senator Javits said in an interview,” theTimes reported, “that he had not returned theso-called ‘blue slip’—the required form stating thathe has no objections to the nomination—tothe Senate Judiciary Committee.”22 In the 1940s,however, Washington Post coverage of Senator Wilbert(Pappy) O’Daniel’s (D-TX) opposition to aRoosevelt judicial nominee notes that O’Daniel“returned to the Judiciary Committee the formalnotification it sends all senators who might be inter-ested in nominations, with this single notation: ‘Thisnomination is obnoxious to me’.”23 This suggeststhat use of blue slips predates the 1950s.24

To identify the origins of the blue slip, I turn to therecords of the Senate Judiciary Committee.25

19. See Harris, Advice and Consent, and Harold Chase, FederalJudges: The Appointing Process (Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1975). Although Chase is likely referring to the blue slipwhen he states that the “committee automatically checks with thesenators of the state where the nominee will hold his post”;however, he does not discuss the practice further (ibid., 20).

20. Alan Neff, U.S. District Judge Nominating Commissions: TheirMembers, Procedures, and Candidates (Chicago, IL: American Judica-ture Society, 1981), 146.

21. “Letter to Senator Kennedy from Judiciary Committee staffre senatorial courtesy, Jan. 22, 1979,” as published in the appendixto Selection and Confirmation of Federal Judges, Hearing before theCommittee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 96th Congress,1st session, GPO 1979.

22. Richard Madden, “Javits Delaying A Judgeship Here,”New York Times, 14 Dec. 1967, 82.

23. Obnoxious indeed. The nominee, former Texas GovernorJames Allred, had resigned a federal district judgeship to runagainst O’Daniel. Allred’s subsequent nomination to the 5thCircuit Court of Appeals was said to be a “‘political payoff’ forhis attempt to unseat the Anti-New Deal Democrat [O’Daniel]”(“O’Daniel considers Allred ‘Obnoxious’,” Washington Post, 16Mar. 1943, 8).

24. The first negative blue slip—or at least the first failure toreturn the blue slip to the committee—by an opposition partysenator appears to have occurred in 1926. Republican Calvin Cool-idge’s nomination of William Josiah Tilson was reported adverselyfrom the Judiciary Committee in June 1926, and, though hereceived two recess appointments to the Middle District ofGeorgia, Tilson was never confirmed. Both senators from Tilson’shome state of Georgia were Democrats.

25. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA),Record Group (RG) 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, Committeeon the Judiciary (hereafter NARA: SJC).

SARAH A. BINDER6

Available in the committee papers at the NationalArchives are notes from committee business meet-ings, the committee’s “executive dockets,” and nomi-nation files for individuals referred to the committeebefore 1956.26 The committee meeting notes revealnothing about the committee’s decision to createthe blue slip. Neither do the nomination filesappear to be reliable for dating the origins of theblue slip. Although the first evidence of the use ofblue slips appears in the nomination files for the65th Congress (1917–1919), the executive docketbooks suggest that the blue slip practice was alreadyin place by that time.27

Extending from the 39th Congress (1865) throughthe 77th (1943), the committee’s executive docketbooks track the passage of nominations into and outof the committee, and typically record the finalconfirmation outcome. Based on the docket books,it appears that the practice of soliciting the views ofhome state senators, recording their stated reasonsfor supporting or opposing the nominee, andnoting the dates on which senators were contactedby and responded to the committee became routinein 1913 at the start of the 63rd Congress. On the

left-hand side of each page of the docket book, thecommittee clerk pasted in a typed copy of the SenateExecutive Session Journal notice that a nominee for afederal judgeship had been referred to the commit-tee. The docket also shows the appointment of a sub-committee to review the nomination. On the rightside of each docket page (see Figure 1), another pre-typed form is pasted into the book with space left forindicating the dates on which home state senatorswere consulted (“Inquiry addressed to each Senatorfrom State whence person nominated”), the attorneygeneral was contacted (“Papers and informationrequested of Attorney General”), the committeeand chamber acted, and the home state senatorsresponded. The docket also records the reactions ofthe senators to the nominee.Examination of the complete series of docket books

reveals that the process of consulting with home statesenators (regardless of party) and documenting thedates and content of their responses was formalizedin 1913. Starting in the late 1890s, the docket booksnote periodically that the home state senators hadbeen contacted regarding a nomination; however,senators’ views and responses were not uniformly soli-cited and documented until 1913. Because the com-mittee regularly solicited the views of the AttorneyGeneral before that date (and recorded such actionin its docket book), it is unlikely that regular reportingof senators’ blue slip responses in 1913 was simply anartifact of better recording keeping by a new andmore fastidious clerk. Before 1913, the clerks werealready recording the transmittal of papers betweenthe Attorney General and the committee.

Fig. 1. Executive docket, Senate Judiciary Committee 63rd Congress.

26. Under S. Res. 464 (96th Cong.), Senate committees havethe authority to restrict access to records of individuals for fiftyyears. As a result, the nomination files for every nominee referredto the Senate Judiciary Committee between 1956 and the presentare sealed by order of the Judiciary Committee.

27. Based on the nomination files, Mitchell Sollenberger datesthe origins of the blue slip to 1917 (“The History of the Blue Slip inthe Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 1917–Present,” CRS Reportfor Congress, RL32013 [2003]).


The blue slips recovered from the 65th Congressnomination files provide a glimpse of the likelyformat of the 63rd Congress blue slips (seeFigure 2).28 The appointee was George W. Jack, nomi-nated by President Woodrow Wilson on 8 March 1917to fill a vacancy on the Federal District Court forWestern Louisiana. Soliciting the views of the twoDemocratic senators from Louisiana, Robert

Broussard and Joseph Ransdell, the committee senteach of the home state senators a blue slip signedby the panel chair, Charles Culberson (D-TX), on 9March 1917. The preprinted form (with blank spaceleft for the committee clerk to type the name, judge-ship, and vice for the vacancy) asked “will you kindlygive me, for the use of the Committee, your opinionand information concerning the nomination of . . .”Both senators returned positive endorsements on 10March. “The appointment of George W. Jack,” Brous-sard noted for the committee, “is entirely satisfactory.An early favorable report will be greatly appreci-ated.”29 The committee swiftly heeded the request,

Fig. 2. First surviving senate blue slip, 65th congress (1917).

28. According to Sollenberger, the format of the blue slipremained unchanged between 1917 and 1922. At that time, a dead-line (seven days from a senator’s receipt of the blue slip) was addedfor senators to return the blue slip. In addition, because CharlesCulberson (D-TX) chaired the committee in the 63rd, 64th, and65th Congresses, one can infer that the blue slips from the 65th(Figure 2, above) closely resemble those used in the 63rd. By nolater than the 65th Congress, the slips were printed on bluestock, thus earning the “blue slip” handle.

29. Blue Slip, George W. Jack Nomination Folder, 65th Cong.,NARA: SJC.

SARAH A. BINDER8

reporting Jack’s nomination favorably on 14 March,with Senate confirmation following two days later.

WHY 1913?

Early twentieth century political events also point to1913 as the critical year for this significant newpolicy approach. It was a pivotal year for the Demo-cratic Party, having won back control of the WhiteHouse in 1912 in a three-way race against OldGuard Republican William Taft and Bull MooseTeddy Roosevelt and control of the Senate. WithDemocrats winning the House, Senate, and WhiteHouse in the 1912 elections, 1913 marked the firstyear of unified Democratic control of governmentsince 1895. A full slate of progressive issues toppedthe Democrats’ agenda after eighteen years of Repub-lican rule, including reform of the tariff, currency,and antitrust laws. Progressives also took aim at thefederal courts, after the Republican Party’s successfultransformation of the federal courts over the previousfive decades into a bastion of conservative economicnationalism.30

Given the electoral context of unified party control,I can safely reject the two potential accounts thatmark the blue slip as a product of interparty compe-tition during a period of divided party government.The blue slip does not appear to have been createdby a majority party intent on undermining an opposi-tion White House’s control of judicial selection.Although the blue slip today provides the oppositionparty with a tool for diluting the president’s influenceover the selection of nominees for federal bench,such partisan intentions could not have motivatedWilson’s Democratic majority when they took officein 1913. Nor does it appear that the blue slip was aninvention of an opposition party seeking to preparefor its parliamentary future once it lost controlof the Senate. To be sure, the Senate Democraticmajority was slim after the 1912 elections—holdingfifty-one of the chamber’s ninety-six seats; however,an account predicated on interparty competitionleading a tenuous majority to make plans for itsfuture parliamentary needs is not a good fit for aninnovation created in a period of unified control.Given the appearance of the blue slip in a period of

unified government, one must examine the fit of thetwo accounts in which institutional innovation is notpredicated on competitive party pressures. To thisend, I consider first the account that suggests intra-party divisions may have motivated factions to institu-tionalize home state senators’ role in the

confirmation process, and then turn to the finalaccount predicated on leaders’ desire to reduceuncertainty about outcomes when the Senate wentinto executive session to consider confirmation ofthe president’s judicial appointments.

WILSON AND DEMOCRATIC FACTIONS

Could intraparty competition over the makeup of thejudiciary help account for the origins of the blue slipin 1913? There are quite a few reasons to be suspi-cious of such an account. First, and most importantly,numerous developments in 1913 signaled SenateDemocrats’ willingness to coalesce behind Wilson.The new president was aggressive in setting theagenda, using his Constitutional power to call Con-gress immediately into special session after his inau-guration in 1913. The Senate Democratic Caucusthat year returned to its occasional practice of desig-nating binding caucus votes upon a two-thirds voteof the Caucus, and Democrats for the first time, in1913, designated their new caucus leader, JohnKern (D-IN), as the majority leader and created aparty whip position.31 Given the electoral imperativeof holding the Democratic Party together andexpanding its base in anticipation of the presidentialelection in 1916, we might expect Democrats to limitinstitutional innovations that intentionally dilutedpresidential control of the agenda.32 Nor would weexpect Democrats in such a context to extend theblue slip—and thus a potential veto power—to theminority party in that year.Second, had Wilson paid little attention to the

courts, we might have seen Senate Democrats moveto increase their leverage over appointments—knowing that the president would acquiesce to astronger Senate role in filling vacant judgeships.Wilson, however, appears to have recognized andcared about the potential policy consequences ofhis appointment power.33 Unlike Taft, Wilson encour-aged his advisors to view federal judgeships as a meansof advancing his policy agenda. He directed his attor-ney general to scrutinize the policy views of potentialjudges with an eye to their progressive credentials, tothe point that senators’ choices were occasionallyrejected. Recognizing the federal courts’ entrenchedeconomic conservatism, facing the first opportunity

30. See William Ross, A Muted Fury: Populists, Progressives, andLabor Unions Confront the Courts, 1890–1937 (Princeton, NJ: Prince-ton University Press, 1994); and Howard Gillman, “How PoliticalParties Can Use the Courts to Advance Their Agendas: FederalCourts in the United States, 1875–1891,” American Political ScienceReview 96 (2002): 511–24.

31. On the 1913 Senate reforms, see Gerald Gamm and StevenS. Smith, “Policy Leadership and the Development of the ModernSenate,” in Party, Process, and Political Change in Congress, ed. DavidW. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford Uni-versity Press, 2002); and Walter Oleszek, “John Worth Kern: Portraitof a Floor Leader,” in First Among Equals: Outstanding Senate Leadersof the Twentieth Century, ed. Richard A. Baker and Roger H. Davidson(Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1991).

32. See Scott C. James, Presidents, Parties, and the State(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

33. OnWilson’s approach to filling the federal courts, see Ross,Muted Fury, and Solomon, “Politics of Appointment.”


in eighteen years to select federal judges, and under-standing the president’s intention to use the courts toadvance and protect progressive goals, it seems unli-kely that Democrats would have rewritten confir-mation practices with the intention of diluting thepresident’s appointment power.

It is worth noting in this context, however, thatthe Judiciary Committee from which the blue slipemerged was hardly a microcosm of the SenateDemocratic Caucus in 1913. Under Culberson, theSenate Judiciary Committee was home to ten Demo-crats, including seven Dixiecrats.34 Given that theJudiciary Committee was the locus of fights over revi-sions to federal antitrust and currency reform in the63rd Congress, policy differences between Wilsonand the panel’s Democrats might have led Democratsto seek a way to increase their leverage over theappointment of new federal judges to federal courtsin the South.35 By creating a committee process forregistering objections to nominees, the committee’ssouthern Democrats might have calculated that useof the blue slip would effectively preserved the localand regional biases exhibited by federal courts inthe South.

That said, though he was by southerner by birth,scholars disagree on the extent of Wilson’s differ-ences with the South.36 Even on the highly salientissue of antitrust reform, Wilson and Judiciary Com-mittee Democrats from the South were largely inagreement throughout 1913 on potential revisionsto the Sherman Act. Rather, it was not until spring1914 that Wilson essentially turned on agrarianDemocrats by moving toward the progressives’ propo-sal of creating a federal trade commission.37 Thistimeline suggests that differences over public policyissues were unlikely to have motivated JudiciaryCommittee Democrats in 1913 to create the blueslip as a means of protecting southern federal judge-ships from the White House’s progressive interests.

MANAGING SENATE UNCERTAINTY

Could Democrats in 1913 have invented the blue slipas a means of reducing uncertainty about the fate oftheir president’s judicial nominees? Again, there islittle solid evidence available against which onecould test this account and draw definitive con-clusions. We do, however, have several pieces ofevidence that are strongly consistent with that insti-tutional account.First, as suggested above, the uncertainty account

fits best in a period of unified party control. Undersuch conditions, the Judiciary Committee chairwould have had an incentive to facilitate confirmationof the president’s nominees. Second, under theuncertainty model, one would expect that the blueslip would have been extended to both majority andminority party senators. If the goal in creating theblue slip was to provide a clear record of the homestate senators’ views on pending nominees, then itmakes sense that the majority party would havewanted to cull such information from minority partysenators as well. While the president was unlikely tohave consulted with opposition party senators inselecting lower court nominees, the lack of a cloturerule on which the majority party rely for suppressingminority party opposition leads us to conclude thatroutine solicitation of home state senators’ viewswould have served the majority’s goals quite well.Moreover, the threat of obstruction was real, asRepublican leaders in the previous Congress sawDemocrats repeatedly block appointments of out-going President William Taft.38

Third, several institutional innovations by SenateDemocrats in the 63rd Congress suggest that thenew Democratic majority was struggling to increasecontrol over the flow of business on the Senatefloor—precursors, of course, to the adoption ofcloture in the 65th Congress (1917–1919). Theseinnovations collectively suggest that the newly empow-ered Democrats were concerned about their ability tomaintain partisan solidarity as they steered Wilson’slegislative priorities through the Senate.One of these innovations was the formal election of

a Democratic floor leader in 1913. Although, as earlyas 1890, Democrats had been selecting a DemocraticCaucus chair—a colleague who was expected to leadthe caucus and, by extension, serve as the party’schamber leader; however, with his election to the pos-ition in 1913, John Kern became the first Senateleader who was consistently referred to as the Demo-crat’s “majority leader.”39 While this change surely

34. On committee membership, see David Canon, GarrisonNelson, and Charles Stewart, “Historical Congressional StandingCommittees, 1st to 79th Congresses, 1789–1947,” Senate/63rdCongress, http://web.mit.edu/17.251/www/data_page.html(accessed 9 Nov. 2006). Augustus Bacon (D-GA) died in office,and was replaced on the committee by fellow Georgia Democrat,Hoke Smith. Note also that the that the Judiciary Committee’s Dix-iecrat bias was more than a simple reflection of the prevailing ratioson Senate committees. In fact, 60 percent of Appropriations Demo-crats hailed from the south, while only 35 percent of Finance Com-mittee Democrats came from the south. Moreover, only 45 percentof 63rd Congress Democrats were from the deep south (plusTennessee).

35. See James, Presidents, Parties, and the State.36. OnWilson’s relations with southern legislators, see C. Vann

Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (Baton Rouge:Louisiana State University Press, 1951); Elizabeth Sanders, Rootsof Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877–1917(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) and James, Presidents,Parties, and the State.

37. See James, Presidents, Parties, and the State, 185–87.

38. See Franklin Burdette, Filibustering in the Senate (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1940), chap. 4.

39. See Gerald Gamm and Steven S. Smith, “The Rise of FloorLeaders in the United States Senate, 1890–1915,” paper presentedat the Conference on Party Effects in the U.S. Senate, Duke Univer-sity, 7–8 Apr. 2006.

SARAH A. BINDER10

reflects a gradual transformation of the office of theparty leader, Democrats appear to have had strongerexpectations for Kern as the first Democratic leader ina period of unified Democratic control after nearlytwenty years.In addition to consolidating their expectations

about their floor leader, Democrats in 1913 alsocreated the new office of party whip, formally electingJ. Hamilton Lewis (D-IL) as the “assistant” to majorityleader Kern.40 According to contemporary accounts,the whip’s office was created by the DemocraticCaucus “as a further precaution against a snap div-ision in the Senate by which the Democrats mightfind themselves in the minority. . . . Mr. Lewis’s chiefduty will be to see that Democrats are present orpaired at every roll call.”41 It was reported at thetime that Democrats invented the whip office out ofa “general dissatisfaction with Mr. Kern’s leader-ship.”42 Whatever the reason, it seems clear thatSenate Democrats were experimenting with newmethods for managing the president’s policyagenda while attempting to eliminate costly surpriseson the chamber floor.A third institutional innovation in the 63rd

Congress also suggests the majority party’s effort toreduce uncertainty about control of the flooragenda. Although unanimous consent agreements(UCAs) had become a regular feature of how theSenate managed the floor agenda before 1914,several modern features of UCAs had not yet beenadopted—allowing confusion to reign on the Senatefloor over the modification and enforcement ofthese time agreements.43 In January 1913, the con-flict resulting from contradictory precedents overadoption and enforcement of UCAs reached itsclimax, leading a Senate committee to recommendformal revision of the UCA practice in 1914. Withthat innovation, UCAs were elevated to the status offormal orders, which transformed UCAs into predict-able and reliable tool for leaders seeking to reduceuncertainties in offering of amendments and timingfloor votes.

Innovations in Democratic leadership and in thetreatment of UCAs in 1913 and 1914 collectivelysuggest that inherited leadership and floor manage-ment practices were proving insufficient to advanceand secure the Democratic agenda—even under themost auspicious conditions of unified Democraticcontrol. Improving the flow of information aboutsenators’ views of pending nominees by creating ablue slip and offering it to both majority and minorityparty senators would have been entirely consistentwith the general tenor of institutional innovationsoccurring in the 63rd Congress. Moreover, given therelative ease of filibustering before adoption of theSenate cloture rule in 1917, Democrats might nothave thought they were relinquishing much powerto the minority in exchange for gaining critical infor-mation. The cost of the blue slip to the majority prob-ably increased after the adoption of the cloture rule,as the opposition party found itself with a quasi-vetoeven after the cloture rule had limited the abilityof very small groups of senators to obstruct themajority.44

Although I lack definitive evidence to tie the blueslip’s creation conclusively to Democrats’ interest inreducing uncertainty, the timing of the blue slip inno-vation certainly seems consistent with the Democrats’institutional imperatives upon regaining controlof the Senate in 1913. Indeed, adoption of theblue slip fits neatly with other accounts of the trans-formation of Congress at the turn of the century asworkloads burgeoned and organizations more gener-ally became professionalized and institutionalized.45

Moreover the demand for innovation to guide thenew president’s agenda through the Senate wasunique to 1913; by 1917, though still enjoyingunified control, Democrats’ electoral incentive tomanage the party’s agenda would have lessened.One final consideration about the initial use of the

blue slip provides even stronger corroboration thatthe practice was likely intended to reduce uncertaintyabout confirmation prospects for the president’snominees. According to one careful study of thenomination files kept by the Senate Judiciary Com-mittee, no Judiciary panel chair allowed an objectionfrom a home state senator (a “negative” blue slip) toautomatically block a nomination in committeebefore 1956. It was not until James Eastland tookthe helm of the panel in 1956 that negative blue

40. See Donald Ritchie, ed.,Minutes of the U.S. Senate DemocraticConference: 1903–1964. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Print-ing Office, 1998), 79.

41. “Democrats Agree to Lobby Inquiry,” New York Times, 29May 1913, 1.

42. Ibid.43. See Jason Roberts and Steven S. Smith, “The Evolution of

Agenda-Setting Institutions in Congress: Path Dependency inHouse and Senate Institutional Development,” in Process, Party,and Policy Making: New Advances in the Study of the History of Congress,ed. David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins, (Palo Alto, CA:Stanford University Press, forthcoming). A UCA sets the parametersfor floor debate and schedules floor votes for legislative measuresand nominations on the Senate floor. Given the lack of a majoritycloture rule (or, before 1917, any cloture rule), unanimousconsent of all senators was required to set the parameters of floordebate and to schedule votes.

44. In this context, adoption of the blue slip offers a primeexample of institutional development resulting from layers ofreforms. On this, see Eric Schickler, Disjointed Pluralism (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

45. See Nelson W. Polsby, “The Institutionalization of theHouse of Representatives,” American Political Science Review 62(1968): 144–68; Gregory Wawro and Eric Schickler, Filibuster:Obstruction and Lawmaking in the U.S. Senate (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2006); and Eric Rauchway, “The Trans-formation of the Congressional Experience,” in The American Con-gress, ed. Julian E. Zelizer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2004).


slips came to be treated as an absolute veto—a prac-tice that Edward Kennedy (D-MA) tempered uponbecoming chair of the committee in 1979.

Before 1956, Senate Judiciary Committee recordsand the Senate Executive Session Journal indicate thatnegative blue slips were treated as advisory to the com-mittee and the full chamber, rather than as a single-handed committee veto exercised by a home statesenator. To understand how a negative blue slipcould be “advisory,” it is helpful to examine the fateof the first nominee apparently subject to a negativeblue slip. Within weeks of the opening of the firstsession of the 65th Congress (1917–1919), committeechair Charles Culberson received a negative blue slipfrom Thomas Hardwick (D-GA) for the nominationof U. V. Whipple for a Federal district judgeship insouthern Georgia (see Figure 3). The committee sub-sequently reported the nomination “adversely” to thefull Senate, which proceeded to refuse to provide itsadvice and consent.46 In short, a negative blue slip pro-vided information to the chair about the potential forstrong floor opposition should the nominee bereported favorably from the Judiciary Committee.Given the practice of senatorial courtesy, the homestate senator of the president’s party could haveexpected his colleagues to vote down the nomineehad he been reported unfavorably from committee.

Nor was this an isolated incident. Three monthslater, Wilson submitted a new nominee, W. E.Thomas, for the same vacant judgeship. In this case,both home state senators returned the same negativeblue slip, stating their simple opposition to confir-mation (see Figure 4). Once again, rather than betreated as an absolute committee veto, the two nega-tive blue slips appear to have led the committee toreport the nominee adversely—a signal received bythe full chamber, which rejected the nominationlater that day. One month later, Wilson tried again,this time selecting a nominee who proved acceptableto the two home state senators.47

Objections registered on blue slips appear to havehad high informational value for the committeechair, allowing him to anticipate and, most impor-tantly, avoid opposition on the Senate floor to the pre-sident’s favored nominees. Lacking the power of acloture rule to bring a contested nomination toa vote, party leaders certainly would have viewed asystem for detecting opposition to nominees beforethe floor stage as a valuable improvement. As such,the original blue slip, seems to have been devised as

an “early warning system,” not an absolute veto. Thathelps to explain, of course, why senators might havebeen willing to allow opposition party senators to fillout blue slips. Democrats did not believe they werehanding over a committee veto to the minority party;rather, they likely believed they were improving theirability to manage the floor and to reduce uncertaintyabout upcoming floor action. Finally, the chair of thecommittee, Charles Culberson, had earlier served aterm (1907–1909) as chair of the Senate DemocraticCaucus—effectively making him the party’s leader.Altering panel practices to improve floor manage-ment would have been a natural instinct for a recentparty leader. Moreover, the Judiciary Committeeused blue slips for many of the other appointmentsthat came through the Judiciary Committee, includ-ing U.S. attorney and marshal nominations. Cullinginformation about senators’ views of these additionalappointments would also have bolstered the chair’sability to forecast floor outcomes during the commit-tee’s consideration of the nominees. Senators’ inten-tions in devising the blue slip, in short, bear a strongresemblance to themotivations underlying other insti-tutional reforms in the 63rd Congress.

DISCUSSION

The transformation of the blue slip from an advisorytool to a potential confirmation veto of the otherparty’s nominees has some strong implications forhow we build theories of institutional choice andchange. Where do institutions come from, and whyand when do they evolve? One prominent approachto answering such questions entails what PaulPierson pointedly terms “actor-centered functional-ism”: explanations of institutional choice are madethrough “reference to the benefits these actorsexpect to derive from particular institutionaldesigns.”48 If an institution secures a particularbasket of benefits, scholars often reason that the insti-tution must have been created to provide thosebenefits for the actors who created the institution.Theoretical accounts of legislative organization in

the U.S. Congress provide a ready example. If theestablishment of congressional committees with dis-tinct and fixed jurisdictions fosters gains from tradeacross committees, then the committee system likelywas designed to secure those gains from trade.49

And if the original committees were not structuredto capture gains from trade, it is assumed that theyevolved in that manner as legislators continuedtheir efforts to capture the gains from trade acrosscommittees. As in the case of committees, the46. Senate Executive Journal, 65th Cong., 1st Sess., 24 Apr. 1917.

47. Hardwick dutifully returned a blue slip with his positiveendorsement. Smith again did not appear to return his blue slip,leading the committee to note on the transmittal paper for thenomination that the nomination of Beverly Evans was “authorizedto be reported favorably by Senator Fletcher . . . in case wordcomes from Senator Smith of Georgia that he has no objection”(see Beverly D. Evans Nomination Folder, NARA: SJC).

48. Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and SocialAnalysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 104.

49. Barry R. Weingast and William Marshall, “The IndustrialOrganization of Congress,” Journal of Political Economy 96 (1988):132–63.

SARAH A. BINDER12

benefits secured by institutional arrangements aretypically collective in character. As Barry Weingasthas observed, “appropriately configured institutionsrestructure incentives so that individuals have anincentive to cooperate. . . . The essence of institutionsis to enforce mutually beneficial exchange andcooperation.”50

Despite the prominence of economic modes ofthinking about institutional choice, there are manyreasons to doubt the easy fit of such an account toepisodes of institutional choice. As Paul Pierson’scritique suggests, unanticipated consequences,changes in the social environment of an institution,and forces that promote institutional resilience aswell as change may intervene over the course of aninstitution’s development. Such dynamics shouldlimit our confidence in accounts that reason back-ward from contemporary effects of an institution to

Fig. 3. First negative blue slip (1917).

50. Barry R. Weingast, “Rational Choice Institutionalism,” inPolitical Science: The State of the Discipline, ed. Ira Katznelson andHelen V. Milner (New York: Norton, 2002), 670.


rational motivations for the institution’s selection.Rational calculation certainly might be at work;however, snapshots of institutional choice, Piersonsuggests, could generate incomplete and potentiallymisleading accounts of institutional design.

An alternative account recognizes that institutions,once adopted, tend not to be fixed in stone. AsEdward Sait observed, “Institutions rise out of experi-ence. . . . A borrowed institution will change in

character to the extent that the new environmentdiffers from the old.”51 Institutions inherited fromthe past can come to have new consequences oncethe political environment shifts. Moreover, new prac-tice can interact with existing rules and, over time,

Fig. 4. Second negative blue slip.

51. Edward Sait, Political Institutions: A Preface (New York:Appleton-Century, 1938), 529.

SARAH A. BINDER14

come to change the use and impact of both. In otherwords, although the current blue slip process is oftenexploited to undercut the influence of the president’spartisans in selecting new judges, such use of the blueslip appears not to have been obvious to the socialactors who created it. Exploitation of the blue slipby the president’s foes appears to have emergedonly as senators began to innovate with old practicesunder new circumstances. That is, key institutionalconsequences of the blue slip do not appear to havebeen anticipated, and thus could not have driventhe adoption of the practice. Answers to the question“where do institutions come from?”, in other words,require us to explore the path along which an insti-tution has evolved.52

CONCLUSION

Nothing in the language of the blue slip requires thechair of the Judiciary Committee to heed the views ofhome state senators when they object to nomineesslated for judgeships in their state. Yet, by mostaccounts, the chair has historically respected objec-tions from home state senators of either party, allow-ing negative blue slips to lead the committee torecommend against confirmation or allowing asingle negative blue slip to block further consider-ation of a nominee.53 Indeed, we can see theimpact of such deference in patterns of nominationand confirmation delay over the latter half of thetwentieth century: ideological foes of the presidenthave used the blue slip threat to systematically slowdown the selection and confirmation of judicial nomi-nees they oppose.54 Such deference to the home statesenator persists, according to Lewis Froman, because“legislators are, in effect, socialized into rules whichspecify that one must not jeopardize his ability toplay future games by seriously discombobulating

other members.”55 To be sure, senators’ willingnessto abide by the rules is also rationale, as they eachexpect to benefit from the norm in the future.56

Classic and recent treatments of senatorial courtesystrongly suggest that deference to home state senatorsserves the individual interests of senators and the col-lective interest of the Senate. Because senators arebetter off with practices such as the blue slip thanwithout it, the practice is maintained by all.However true this may be about the contemporaryfunctioning of the chamber, it falls short as a basisfor explaining the development of the practice.Because the effects of the new practice were unlikelyto have been anticipated or desired when the blue slipwas adopted in 1913, it is doubtful that the playersinvolved selected the new institutional practice inanticipation of the effects of the new procedure. Inthis respect, Pierson’s warnings regarding the limitsof functionalist accounts—even those based onexpectations of rational behavior—ring true. We areunlikely to be able to reason backwards from conse-quences to intentions to discern the origins of insti-tutional arrangements.Although Democrats would occasionally find them-

selves at odds with President Wilson, who was eager touse his appointment power to place progressives onthe bench no matter the views of home state senators,such internal party competition seems not to havemotivated the construction of the blue slip in 1913.Instead, the transformation of the blue slip from advi-sory tool to potential veto power was a striking, yetunintended, consequence. Why and how the blueslip (as an informal practice) took root and becametantamount to a veto, of course, remains to beexplained. It would appear from the origins of theblue slip, however, that institutional developmentoccurs as social actors, constrained by the weightof inherited practice, innovate at the margins inpursuit of their short-term goals—often with unantici-pated, but no less consequential, results.

52. See also Kathleen Thelen, How Institutions Evolve: The Politi-cal Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

53. With the rising salience of judicial nominations to partyagendas, respect for the norm might be eroding. In 2003, theSenate Judiciary Committee chair went ahead with a judicial nomi-nation hearing on a 6th Circuit nominee even though two negativeblue slips had been returned by theMichigan senators. See JenniferDlouhy, “Blue Slip or Not, Hatch Holds Judiciary Panel Hearing onBush Court Nominee,” CQ Today, 30 Jul. 2003. For a broader assess-ment of the blocking power of home state senators, see DavidPrimo, Sarah A. Binder, and Forrest Maltzman, “Who Consents?A Theoretical and Empirical Examination of Pivotal Senators inJudicial Selection,” (unpublished ms., 2006, http://www.rochester.edu/college/psc/primo/pbmpivotal.pdf (accessed January 19,2007).

54. See Binder and Maltzman, “Limits of Senatorial Courtesy,”and “Senatorial Delay.”

55. Froman, “Organization Theory,” 523.56. Tamar Jacobi, “The Senatorial Courtesy Game: Explaining

the Norm of Informal Vetoes in Advice and Consent Nominations,”Legislative Studies Quarterly 30 (2005): 193–217.


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