Clik here to view.
What Now? Choosing Your Cabinet
You have designed and staffed your White House, so you can now effectively move on to choosing your cabinet members and other key officials. You will need to consider the diversity, political and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Memorandum to the Next National Security Advisor
INTRODUCTION Congratulations! You have just been appointed to the second most demanding job in Washington. (Your new boss takes the honors.)As the president’s closest national security aide, you will...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Next National Security Adviser
INTRODUCTION Nowhere in U.S. law is there a provision establishing the position of the assistant to the president for national security affairs. The job is the creation of presidents, and its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Might the Obama Administration Affect the Composition of the U. S. Courts...
President Obama yesterday announced his first judicial nomination: Southern District of Indiana Judge David Hamilton to fill the vacancy created by the September 2008 retirement of Seventh Circuit...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reforming the Presidential Nomination Process
Brookings Institution Press 2009 260pp. The 2008 U.S. presidential campaign has provided a lifetime's worth of surprises. Once again, however, the nomination process highlighted the importance of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Primary Politics : How Presidential Candidates Have Shaped the Modern...
Brookings Institution Press 2009 175pp. The 2008 presidential primaries produced more drama than many general election campaigns. John McCain overcame the near-implosion of his campaign to capture the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Changing Face of the Federal Judiciary
Executive Summary Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the United States Supreme Court highlights attention again on the Court’s demographic makeup. She is the first Hispanic member and third...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Advice and Dissent : The Struggle to Shape the Federal Judiciary
Brookings Institution Press 2009 150pp. For better or worse, federal judges in the United States today are asked to resolve some of the nation's most important and contentious public policy issues....
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Half-Empty Government Can't Govern: Why Everyone Wants to Fix the...
INTRODUCTION On May 6 of this year, British voters failed for the first time in 36 years to give a single party a majority in their country’s Parliament. This forced elaborate negotiations in which...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Judicial Nominations and Confirmations in the 111th Senate and What to Look...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARYOn January 1, 2011, Chief Justice John G. Roberts challenged the “political branches to find a long-term solution to [the] recurring problem” in the “process of filling judicial...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Confirming Evidence: The Breakdown in Advice and Consent
Chief Justice John Roberts' State of the Judiciary report released last week raises the specter of partisan gridlock over the selection of federal judges: "Each political party has found it easy to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Do Judicial Emergencies Matter? Nomination and Confirmation Delay during the...
Introduction Last month, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy highlighted a “rise in judicial vacancies... and an increasing number of judicial emergencies.” “Judicial vacancies” is a fairly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Increased Efficiency for Senate Confirmation of Presidential Appointments
The process of nominating and confirming appointees for posts in the federal government has been a mess for decades, and in recent years it has only gotten worse. By the eighteen-month mark of Barack...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New Federal Government CIO is Key to Improving Government Performance
The appointment of new federal chief information officer Steven VanRoekel comes at a challenging time for President Barack Obama. The national economy continues to be weak. Congress plans to cut...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is President Obama Playing Fair? Examining Richard Cordray's Recess Appointment
President Obama today will give a recess appointment to Richard Cordray to serve as director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau established under Dodd-Frank. With Senate Republicans...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Judicial Nominations and Confirmations after Three Years—Where Do Things Stand?
Democrats groused in the Obama administration’s first two years about the slow pace of judicial nominations and Senate confirmation.* By the end of the administration’s third year: the pace of both...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Trial Court Judges and Math, Senate Style
Just in time for tomorrow’s celebration of Pi Day, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has given the Senate its own special math problem. Reid filed cloture motions yesterday on 17 nominees...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Judicial Confirmations: What Thurmond Rule?
In this new paper, Russell Wheeler analyzes use of the so-called “Thurmond Rule”—the historical practice of the Judiciary Committee and the Senate slowing down the pace or completely stopping the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Confirming by Supermajority: Another Look at Today’s Fed Nominations
The Senate readily confirmed Jerome Stein and Jay Powell to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve this afternoon, with each securing 70 or more votes for confirmation. With these two new...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Campaign 2012 : Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy
Brookings Institution Press 2012 250pp. Ready or not, the quadrennial run for the White House is upon us. American voters face a very different landscape than they did four years ago, when the...
View Article
