Federal judicial selection

by E. Sebastian Arduengo

Two hundred and twenty three days is a long time to wait for a new job. Yet, that’s the average number of days that an Obama judicial nominee must wait from nomination to confirmation.

While they’re waiting, they have to put their professional lives on hold, lest they inadvertently do anything that might stall their confirmation. And, that’s just the average nominee; many have waited much, much longer. Caitlin Halligan, one of President Obama’s nominees to the influential Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has been waiting nearly three years for her confirmation to go through a bitterly divided Senate. Some say that Halligan’s nomination is controversial because of her statements on the Second Amendment and detainee rights. But, even completely uncontroversial nominees who are rated as “highly qualified” by the American Bar Association, like Bill Kayatta, who was recently confirmed to sit on the First Circuit, have languished for months in the Senate. Robert Bacharach, who was recently confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, had his confirmation delayed in a filibuster aided by his home-state Senators.

When judges have to wait to take their posts, ordinary people have to wait increasingly longer for routine legal matters to get resolved. Right now there are 88 vacancies in the federal judiciary, about a third of those are considered judicial emergencies – where the judges on a court have so many cases that they are forced to preform judicial triage. In those courts, resolving a civil case can take years because criminal matters take higher priority on the docket, and even those can be significantly delayed despite the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial. In some districts, there are so many vacancies that a term like “ghost court” wouldn’t be far off the mark. Six judgeships in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which includes Philadelphia, are vacant, along with five judgeships in the District of Arizona. There are even federal courthouses that have literally been sitting empty for years because no one has even been nominated to fill those judgeships.

by Jeremy Leaming

Filibuster reform is needed because Senate Republicans have gone over a cliff of some sort, using the tool in an unprecedented manner to thwart consideration of significant legislation and, of course, scuttle or delay some judicial nominations.

At People For Blog, Paul nails Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for his wildly misleading blather about the filibuster. Pointing to Grassley’s Dec. 3 statement on supposedly “setting the record straight” on consideration of judicial nominations during lame-duck sessions, Paul notes that the senator avoided the “topic completely,” and instead crowed about his party’s generosity for voting on at least one nominee during the lame-duck Congress. Grassley claimed in his statement that it is rare for the Senate to confirm judges during lame-duck sessions in presidential election years. “Republicans have been more than fair to this President and his judicial nominations,” Grassley’s statement reads.

Beyond misleading, Grassley’s statement is disingenuous. Senate Republicans have been anything but generous to President Obama. Instead they have used the threat of filibuster and other delaying tactics to slow the pace of confirmations. Their actions have led to a federal bench with more than 80 vacancies, many of them considered judicial emergencies. (See JudicialNominations.org for more on the crisis surrounding the federal courts.)  

The blockade of judges, as Paul notes, has also created “a huge backlog” of nominees to confirm. This week the Senate has confirmed two of the 19 nominations left pending when it recessed in August for campaigning. The Senate confirmed Paul Grimm, for a seat on the district court in Maryland and Michael P. Shea for a district court seat in Connecticut. Both nominees cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee months ago. That means up-or-down votes on those nominees and the 17 others in a functioning Senate should have occurred months ago. Republicans, however, may have wanted to stall those nominations in hopes that their party would capture the White House and fill the vacancies with right-wing judges.