Litigation

Obama: Fewest Judicial Confirmations Since Nixon

By Peter Hardin

When the Senate is on recess and there’s no real news about the large backlog of federal judicial nominations, you can always dig for historical comparisons.

The Associated Press did exactly that in an article reporting that President Obama has placed fewer men and women on the federal bench than any president since Richard Nixon, at a corresponding point in Nixon’s first term four decades ago.

Especially since the Los Angeles Times recently reported that almost one of eight federal judgeships is vacant (see Gavel Grab), the nominations backlog and partisan politics in the Senate have gotten extensive attention–for a period when Congress is on vacation.

The historical context can be valuable, however, for spotlighting the current situation, when “fewer than half of Obama’s nominees have been confirmed and 102 out of 854 judgeships are vacant,” as the AP reports.

Gavel Grab has frequently visited the topic of who’s deserving of blame–Senate Republicans, for blocking certain judicial nominees, or Obama, for a slower pace of announcing judicial nominations and, some say, failing to press hard enough for judicial confirmations.

Under Democratic control, the Senate has confirmed 40 of Obama’s judges. Nixon, a Republican, had won confirmation of 33 at a corresponding point in his first term, from a Senate controlled by Democrats.

That Obama has nominated about 40 fewer candidates for judgeships than Presidents George W. Bush or Bill Clinton at this point in their first terms has surprised some observers, given Obama’s prior employment teaching constitutional law, and picking a team with experience in selecting judges.

“It seems like it has not been a priority,” said Ilya Shapiro of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. “It’s been surprising because he’s a constitutional lawyer, he knows how courts work, how important they are. It seemed like an easy bone to throw to his base to make a mark, a lasting mark.”

In Huffington Post, Sam Stein drew on the AP report to write an article headlined, “Obama Left Largely Helpless as Judicial Vacancies Reach Crisis.”

Also in the Huffington Post, Judith E. Schaeffer, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, zeroed in on a long-stalled federal nomination and accused Senate Republicans of judicial obstructionism. Her commentary was about Kimberly Mueller, nominated for the Eastern District of California bench.

You can learn more about the impact of political partisanship on federal judgeships from Justice at Stake?s issues page on the topic, and you can read about the Obama administration?s track record in these earlier Gavel Grab posts. To read about a letter by JAS and two other reform groups urging efforts to reduce the growing judicial nominations backlog, click here.

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 08, 2010 (boomark / email).