not previously been an elected official).

After 1896, things changed. Only one of 22 Supreme Court nominations was rejected between 1897 and 1932. With the arrival of more intellectual justices like Holmes and Brandeis, the Court gradually acquired more prestige and less obvious partisanship in this period, during which (not coincidentally) the Court rarely clashed with the political branches of the federal government. Of perhaps equal importance, after the Fuller nomination in 1888, there would not be another Supreme Court nomination until the 1950s by a president whose party did not also control the Senate.

Sixteen of the twenty-two nominations in this period were made in the ideal conditions: the first two years of a presidential term, with a Senate controlled by the president’s party. Fifteen of the sixteen wereconfirmed with nearly no opposition; the sole exception, Hoover nominee John J. Parker in 1930, was narrowly defeated with significant opposition from Republican senators (due to racist remarks and anti-labor judicial decisions). The two nominations in the third year of a presidency (one of them in January, the other in February) were likewise easily confirmed.

But even in an era of few confirmation fights, there was still some resistance to election-year nominees. Two of the four (Mahlon Pitney and Louis Brandeis in 1912 and 1916, respectively) garnered significant votes in opposition, and in 1932, a weakened Herbert Hoover abandoned his party to nominate Benjamin Cardozo, a New York Democrat of impeccable liberal credentials, in the midst of a presidential campaign against the Democratic governor of New York, Franklin D.