What was the nature of Presidential-Senate relations at the time?

• Papers should provide a biographical description of the justice including demographic
information, education and work experience, past government offices held etc.
• Papers should describe and analyze the political and legal context surrounding the
vacancy that the justice of interest was nominated to fill. How did the vacancy arise?
Who was being replaced? Who was the President? Why did the President nominate this
justice? What was the nature of Presidential-Senate relations at the time?
• Papers should describe and analyze the confirmation process for this justice. Consider
addressing the following questions: “What were the themes or issues that seemed to
dominate the confirmation hearings? (At a minimum students should be able to identify
and discuss 3 important legal issues) How did the justice answer or respond to these
questions and issues? Did she or he take any hard stances on these issues? Did any other
issues or controversies surround the confirmation?” This will require students to review
not only news and scholarly accounts of the confirmation hearing but the confirmation
transcripts as well.
• Papers should provide a discussion and analysis of how the justice has voted on these key
issues since being confirmed and drawing connections back to what was said and debated
during the confirmation.
• Papers should integrate the theories, lessons, approaches, and models that have been
introduced throughout the course.
• Papers should include a closing section summarizing the findings and conclusions of the
paper.
• In addition to these substantive elements, papers should meet the following formatting
requirements.
o Papers should be a minimum of 12 pages
o Papers must be typed; use footnotes rather than endnotes, use a 12-point
conventional font such as Times New Roman or Calibri, and be double-spaced.
o Papers should be properly proofread and edited for grammatical, spelling, and
syntax issues.
o Papers should a correctly compiled bibliography.
o Papers should be based upon reliable and credible academic and scholarly
sources. Websites such as Wikipedia or encyclopedic-type cites should not be
used.
o Papers should use conventional political science formatting and citation methods
as suggested by the American Political Science Association’s style guidelines for
all of the updates and the final paper. For examples of this method, please see the
APSA’s website (http://www.apsanet.org) and the style guidelines provided for
the American Political Science Review