LOBBYING FOR JUSTICE - ORGANIZED INTERESTS, SUPREME-COURT NOMINATIONSAND THE UNITED-STATES-SENATE

Theory: By providing information to senators and their constituents ab out how nominees are likely to behave on the Court if confirmed; and b y communicating information about constituents' preferences through gr assroots lobbying campaigns, interest groups help shape senators' pref erences for nominees and inform them about the appropriate importance to attach to constituency preferences. Hypotheses: We argue that inter est groups play an important role in shaping senators' decisions. The empirical implication of our argument is that unless some account of g roups' lobbying efforts is included in models used to explain congress ional voting, the importance of traditional predictors such as ideolog y and constituency will be exaggerated. Method: Using data from survey s of organized interests' activities on the Bork, Souter, and Thomas n ominations, we estimate the coefficients for our model with a two-stag e OLS-probit procedure. Results: Our empirical analyses indicate that interest group lobbying has a statistically significant effect on sena tors' confirmation votes on all three nominations.