Litigation

Essay: Confirmation Delays Threaten Diversity

By Peter Hardin

It’s little discussed, but a troubling cost of the judicial confirmation crisis is its threat to diversity on the federal bench.

That is the intriguing argument advanced in a Huffington Post commentary by Leslie Proll, director of the Washington office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Proll offers this data as evidence:

“Among the stalled nominations are highly qualified minority candidates whose confirmations would do much to promote diversity on the bench. Indeed, three of the four nominees facing the highest hurdles for Senate confirmation are racial minorities.”

As examples she mentions President Obama’s nominations of Goodwin Liu, who would be the lone Asian American in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Edward Chen, who could become the first Asian American to serve on the district court in the Northern District of California; and Arvo Mikkanen, who would be the lone Native American on the federal bench if confirmed.

Forty percent of Obama’s nominees to the federal bench are racial or ethnic minorities. They will bring diversity to the courts only if the Senate moves in a timely way to confirm them, Proll writes.

Here’s an update about judicial nominations:

• The Senate voted this week to confirm litigator Amy Berman Jackson and Judge James ?Jeb? Boasberg,to sit on the District Court for the District of Columbia, a Blog of Legal Times article reported.
• The Senate Judiciary Committee again sent the nomination of Edward Chen to the full Senate, while holding off action on several others, including those of Goodwin Liu and of John “Jack” McConnell of Rhode Island, according to the Main Justice blog.

You can learn about these nominees and others by checking out Gavel Grab.

Full post as published by The Gavel on March 18, 2011 (boomark / email).