History of Supreme Court Nominations

This database features the complete print series Supreme Court of the U.S. Hearings and Reports on Successful and Unsuccessful Nominations of Supreme Court Justices by the Senate Judiciary Committee, scholarly articles, and more!

Search Tips and Tricks

Search Box

Use the Just Search for option within the search box to search across all content that is discoverable in the History of Supreme Court Nominations database. For example, let's search for any time the phrase religious freedom was mentioned during the Supreme Court nomination hearing for Samuel Alito. Using the Full Text tab, enter the phrase "religious freedom" and select the search button.

Next, use the facets on the left hand side of the results page to refine the results. Select Supreme Court Nominations from the Document Type facet and choose Samuel Alito from the Justice facet.

Use the Turn to page option to view when religious freedom was mentioned within the documents listed.

Advanced Search

Use the Advanced Search option located under the main search bar within the History of Supreme Court Nominations database. For example, let's search for "Ruth Bader Ginsburg" and any time the word dissent is used within Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports. Use the text fields to enter your search terms and select CRS Reports from the Select Document Type section.

This will bring users to a results page that will only include CRS Reports that feature our search terms.

Venn Diagram Search

Users can visualize the results yield of various keywords to better refine their searches.

To use the Venn Diagram feature in the History of Supreme Court Nominations database, select the Advanced Search hyperlink to find the Venn Diagram Search within.

Users will be redirected to a search bar, instructions for its use, and example searches. Enter a search for multiple terms separated with the Boolean operators "AND." A Venn Diagram will appear, illustrating the various combinations of those terms and their respective results yield throughout the database. The original search combining all terms will appear by default, visually represented by the red intersection of all circles.

View a sample Venn Diagram Search for the terms abortion and "birth control" below.

This search returns these results: