Shedding (Empirical) Light on Judicial Selection

Relative to commentators at Political Science and Economics meetings, the discussants at law conferences are generally quite kind, genteel even. They almost always say, "This is a really wonderful set of papers" - even if the papers are not so wonderful - or that they really learned a lot from the papers - even if they didn't. Happily, with regard to the three papers the organizers asked me to discuss,' I need not stretch the truth for purposes of collegiality. I really do think they are a wonderful set of papers and really did learn a lot