Confirming Chiefs: Ideology, opportunity, and the Court’s Center Chair

It was an extraordinary day. Indeed, in the history of the Supreme Court, few could compare with what happened on June 12, 1941. for on this day, President franklin D. roosevelt made three appointments to the high bench, a historical rarity.¹ first, he named South Carolina’s junior senator, James “Jimmy” Byrnes, to a seat left open by the retirement of Justice James Mcreynolds of Tennessee, the last of the four Horsemen who together led the charge against the constitutionality of fDr’s New Deal legislation in the mid-1930s. Byrnes was one of the leaders of the southern Democrats, and his selection