Letters of Endorsement for Supreme Court nominees
I am researching the role of letter endorsements of candidates in the confirmation of recent Supreme Court Justices. I have located the Senate Reports for the confirmation hearing of Justice Gorsuch (J-115-6) and Justice Kavanaugh (J-115-61), but I have been unable to locate the Confirmation Hearing pdfs for Justices Barrett and Justice Katanji Brown-Jackson. Specifically, I am looking for letters sent to the Judiciary Committee that endorsed or opposed the candidate's nomination, with an emphasis on letters sent by law professors and former supreme court clerks.
Thank you.
Answer
Thank you for your question.
The confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown-Jackson have not been published yet. There are videos of the hearings on C-SPAN and on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee website, and pre-publication transcripts of the witness statements are available in the ProQuest Congressional database (which we can send you copies of if you need them), but the full text of the letters will not be available until the official nomination hearings transcripts are published, which usually doesn't happen until a few years after the nominations are held.
You might be able to obtain copies of the letters by contacting one of the senators from your state: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
Alternatively, you could try contacting one of the members of the Judiciary Committee, but they might just refer you to your state senator. The current members of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary are listed at https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/members
Dick Durbin of Illinois was the chair during the nomination hearings for Ketanji Brown-Jackson, and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina was chair during the nomination hearings for Amy Coney Barrett.
I hope this information is helpful to you. If this is not what you need, or should you require any further assistance, please let us know.
Bobby Griffith
Lead Government Information Reference Associate
Sycamore Library
University of North Texas Libraries