Dion Farganis, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, has just published two articles on Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Both articles, co-authored with Justin Wedeking (University of Kentucky), challenge longstanding assumptions about the hearings. Specifically, Farganis and Wedeking find that Supreme Court nominees are much more forthcoming during their testimony than previously believed — a discovery that has generated great interest among judicial scholars, critics, and commentators.
The first article, “No Hints, No Forecasts, No Previews’: An Empirical Analysis of Supreme Court Nominee Candor from Harlan to Kagan,” was published in Law & Society Review, a leading journal in the field of law and courts. The second article, “The Candor Factor: Does Nominee Evasiveness Affect Judiciary Committee Support for Supreme Court Nominees?” was published in Spring 2011 in the Hofstra Law Review.
Farganis and Wedeking are currently completing a book manuscript detailing their study of the confirmation hearing process.