With the way the Senate is confirming judges, which is extremely slow due to Republican obstructionism, the federal bench workload will soon be handled primarily by octogenarians, said U.S. Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit Judge Richard D. Cudahy, one of the nation’s leading appellate judges.
After being introduced at the 2011 ACS National Convention by ACS Board member and Indiana University law school professor Dawn Johnsen, Cudahy, who has senior status on the Seventh Circuit, took some jabs at the increasingly contentious judicial confirmation process. Cudahy first referenced Johnsen’s nomination by President Obama to lead the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which Republicans successfully defeated.
“Dawn, as you know is just a fabulous person, a jewel both in head and heart,” Cudahy said. “As you all know she should be occupying at this moment a key role in the justice department. But instead was hung out to dry in a disgraceful exhibition of partisan rancor. That was a tragic loss of fabulous talent I think by our country.
“And we are apparently facing some of the same kind of problem with my daughter-in-law Victoria Nourse, who is a prodigious legal scholar who has been nominated by the president as a judge on our court,” Cudahy continued. “She faces no objection of substance, but has become entangled in some sort of ambush of newly discovered senate rules, and even denied a hearing.”
Cudahy added, “The way we are going, it looks to me as if most of the judicial work is going to be done by 80 and 90 year-olds, like me, who are not obviously afflicted with Alzheimer’s, since they will be the only ones left to do anything. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the most appreciated presentation in our most recent Circuit conference was a lecture by a doctor on Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. He provided us with useful information about a subject that really concerns us, and ought to.”
Nourse was first nominated by Obama to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2010 and was approved by Wisconsin’s senators at the time she was nominated. But after Nourse was renominated earlier this year, her nomination has stalled because the state’s newest senator, Ron Johnson has refused to sign off on the nomination, saying that Nourse needs to be reconsidered by the commission.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Tea Party favorite, who defeated the state’s former Sen. Russ Feingold in last year’s midterm elections, has bemoaned the ways of the Senate, recently telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “I have been here for six months, and the U.S. Senate has accomplished virtually nothing.”
The Sentinel later noted in the same article, “Johnson has taken a staunch conservative line on judicial appointments, blocking consideration of two Obama court nominees, Louis Butler and Victoria Nourse, and voting against the president’s choices for solicitor general and several judgeships.”
For more updates and analysis of the president’s efforts to fill the rising number of federal court vacancies, visit JudicialNominations.org.
Video of Judge Cudahy’s comments is available here or by clicking image below.
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