Citation:
Gary King. 1987. “Presidential Appointments to the Supreme Court: Adding Systematic Explanation to Probabilistic Description.” American Politics Quarterly, 15, Pp. 373–386. Copy at https://tinyurl.com/y6e5y65s
Article | 250 KB |
Abstract:
Three articles, published in the leading journals of three disciplines over the last five decades, have each used the Poisson probability distribution to help describe the frequency with which presidents were able to appoint United States Supreme Court Justices. This work challenges these previous findings with a new model of Court appointments. The analysis demonstrates that the number of appointments a president can expect to make in a given year is a function of existing measurable variables.See also: Event Counts and Durations