"Dr. Sheldon Goldman" is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of Picking Federal Judges (1997, 1999) and The Federal Courts as a Political System, (3rd ed., 1985). He also has written other works and numerous articles in professional journals including American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, and Judicature and chapters in books. He is chair of the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association, 2000-2001; and a member of the Editorial Board, Law & Politics Book Review, 1994-1997; American Political Science Review, 1981-1985, and American Journal of Political Science, 1979-1982.

Dr. Goldman received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association in 2006.

More Sheldon Goldman on Wikipedia.

I suspect that Leahy and the Democrats' position is strategic: to defuse Republican charges that this is strict partisanship - that interest groups are controlling the show.

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It really depends on the committee and the preferences of the committee members.

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It's Roberts's nomination to lose. He needs to please the Republican conservative base and more-centrist Democrats, ... If he comes across as an ideologue - as anti-civil rights, anti-women's rights - he will lose. If he stonewalls, he's finished. But it's inconceivable ... that he will open himself up like that.

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This is a member of the president's official family.

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Is she qualified? If the leading professional association is either divided or comes in with a negative report, that could be fatal. Strongly positive, that would be helpful.

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To have a Supreme Court open just four weeks from now, the first Monday in October, with only seven people and no chief justice would be unprecedented, and I don't see that happening.

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I have to sympathize with this woman.

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Just because you run IBM, for example, doesn't mean you are exceptional at acquiring companies.

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If a nominee has been very active in either organization, it raises some red flags. If you have that membership and a record of activism, that compounds the felony.

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