Scherer, Bartels, and Steigerwalt Sounding the Fire Alarm: The Role of Interest Groups in the Lower Federal Court Confirmation Process

and Thomas G. Hansford for their insightful comments on previous drafts of the manuscript. We also thank the anonymous reviewers who challenged us to more fully develop the theoretical underpinnings of our argument; their comments and suggestions significantly strengthened our argument. Some of the interviews cited in the manuscript were conducted with support from the Dirksen Congressional Center. Scherer, Bartels, and Steigerwalt 1 Traditionally, lower federal court nominations were confirmed swiftly and unanimously by the Senate. However, increasingly, lower court confirmations have become lengthy and contentious proceedings. Traditional explanations for this shift have centered on the temporal political environment and the ideological extremism of the nominees. We propose an alternative theory to explain this phenomenon: interest group opposition. We posit that interest groups sound “fire alarms ” – raising the salience of a lower court nomination – thereby forcing senators politically aligned with the groups to abandon the senators ’ default positions (confirm swiftly