100 Years of Supreme Court Justice Replacements
Purpose: With the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG), people lamented how a democratically appointed Justice was likely going to be replaced by a republican appointed justice. I wanted to see how frequently such things happened. Justices are chosen through presidential nomination and are presumed to reflect the political ideals of that president. With this assumption, this graph shows how frequently a justice is replaced by a politically similar candidate. “Democrat to Democrat” means that both the outgoing and justice were nominated by a Democratic president. “Democrat to Republican” represents the case we are likely to see with RBG—a outgoing Justice nominated by a Democrat will be replaced with a Republican-nominated Justice. The supreme court process is a bit complicated and I struggled with how to represent this most clearly. I would be happy to hear suggestions on how I could have done it better. As it is, I think you need to have a general ...