Senatorial scrutiny of judicial nominees has long centered on the role of confirmation hearings in advice and consent, but senators draw on multiple sources of information when evaluating nominees for lifetime appointments to the federal bench. Questions for the Record (QFRs) – written questions submitted to nominees after the conclusion of their hearings – are a common yet understudied component of the Judiciary Committee’s vetting process. I analyze the use of QFRs for all Circuit Court of Appeals nominees from 2001 to 2022, finding that partisan differences between the nominating president and senator strongly structure who submits them, while interest group opposition to a nominee, though significant, plays a more modest role than it does in senators’ question-asking behavior during confirmation hearings. Moreover, senators’ use of QFRs has increased substantially in recent sessions of Congress, especially following reforms to the filibuster in 2013. These findings suggest that QFRs are not simply an extension of hearing questions. Instead, they serve their own vetting functions for Committee senators, particularly for outpartisans, those highly engaged in the process, and when time constraints may limit other means of vetting.

Legislative oversight is an important element of the relationship between parliament and government. However, little research explores how the characteristics of ministers incentivize MPs to oversee some more thoroughly than others. This article studies whether and why the oversight activities of parliamentarians are shaped by ministers’ gender. We argue that legislators control women ministers more tightly than men due to stereotypical competence ascriptions and perceptions of lower trustworthiness of women. Studying original data for five European democracies since 1990, we show that legislators ask more written and oral questions to women compared to men ministers. Moreover, we underpin the causal mechanisms behind this pattern using semi-structured interviews with thirty-two parliamentarians inquiring about a specific replacement in that country. Revealing gender bias in legislative oversight has broader implications for women in government and parliamentary democracies.

Parliamentary questions are an essential tool of legislative oversight. However, the extent to which they are effective in controlling the executive remains underspecified both theoretically and methodologically. This article advances a systematic framework for evaluating the effectiveness of parliamentary questions drawing on principal–agent theory, the public administration literature on accountability and communication research. The framework is called the ‘Q&A approach to legislative oversight’ based on the premise that the study of parliamentary questions (Q) needs to be linked to their respective answers (A) and examined together (Q&A) at the micro‐level as an exchange of claims between legislative and executive actors. Methodologically, the Q&A approach to legislative oversight offers a step‐by‐step guide for qualitative content analysis of Q&A that can be applied to different legislative oversight contexts at different levels of governance. It is argued that the effectiveness of Q&A depends on the strength of the questions asked and the responsiveness of answers provided, which are correspondingly operationalised. To illustrate the merits of the approach, the article includes a systematic case study on the relationship between the European Parliament and the European Central Bank in banking supervision (2013–2018), showing the connection between specific institutional settings and the effectiveness of parliamentary questions.

Recent reforms to the Canadian Senate removed senators from the Liberal Party caucus and changed the appointment process to be more nonpartisan. This article asks: to what extent did the reforms affect legislative oversight in the Senate? By studying the Senate's legislative amendments, I find that the reformed Senate is more willing to amend bills than it was previously. The reforms led to sharp increases in the Senate's amendment rate, the number of amendments moved and the percentage of successful motions in amendment. In interviews, senators revealed that they see oversight differently following the reforms. Senators no longer have opportunities to advise the government in caucus, so they have begun using amendments to exercise oversight. This article concludes that the reforms shifted senators’ understanding of their function of oversight, leading to a higher amendment rate and increased visible scrutiny of government by the Senate.