With judicial nominations continuing to stall and no known Supreme Court vacancies on the horizon, “there are no excuses” for not filling the vacancies on our federal courts, ACS Board Member Linda Greenhouse writes in The New York Times.
Greenhouse’s piece comes on the same day as a CNN report documenting the “dire situation caused by a massive [judicial] nominee logjam on Capitol Hill.”
That judges are “among a president’s most important legacies is an observation so obvious as to be platitudinous,” she writes, blaming both Republicans and Democrats for continued obstruction.
The Republicans’ strategy in blocking nominees, she asserts, is not about “anything that the Republicans say or imply it’s about” other than blocking judges who may eventually arise as nominees for future Supreme Court vacancies.
But, she asks, why hasn’t Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “scheduled a vote that would dare the Republicans to state their objections” to D.C. Court of Appeals nominee Caitlin Halligan, whose “qualifications are beyond a possible doubt” and who has nothing senators can hold against her but “excellence and career potential”?
And why hasn’t President Barack Obama made more judicial nominations?
“[Y]ou can’t confirm someone who hasn’t been nominated,” she writes.
Read the full article here. And visit JudicialNominations.org to learn more about the judicial vacancy crisis and follow developments.
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nded drugs and defective medical devices. Taking into account over-billing by defense contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, the for profit colleges whose degrees are not worth the tuition financed with government grants, the construction contracts designed to create good paying jobs but whose workers are not being paid prevailing wages, or the large scale procurements made under the Buy American Act where the goods are actually manufactured abroad, and the government has either wasted a massive amount of money or the money has been spent in ways that will not bring anticipated returns. Worse yet, as in the case of misbranded drugs, taxpayers may also face physical injury or illness.
In one of the most, er, hotly anticipated cases of its term, the Supreme Court yesterday heard arguments in the climate change nuisance suit of Connecticut v. American Electric Power. From the beginning of this litigation, pundits have questioned the plaintiffs’ decision to seek injunctive relief gradually abating the defendants’ greenhouse gas emissions. To critics, this form of relief – as opposed to, say, monetary damages – seems to highlight the complex and value-laden aspects of climate change as a policy problem, making judges more likely to dismiss the suit as lying beyond the ken of the judicial branch.