Are appointment politics and court decisions linked? Do presidents use judicial appointments to shape their policy agendas? C. K. Rowland and Robert Carp provide definitive answers to these questions and, in the process, provide a new paradigm for the study of federal jurisprudence.

As the authors remind us, since the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal trial judges have been politically appointed, a process frequently the object of partisan scorn. Marshall's famous Marbury v. Madison case was triggered by the highly politicized appointment of William Marbury. FDR tried to protect his...