Litigation

Senate Deal on Judges Breaks Logjam

By Peter Hardin

The long Senate stall is over, and a reported deal is expected to result in confirmation of at least 19 non-controversial nominees to the federal bench while four highly controversial nominations expire.

Already 12 judicial nominees have been confirmed since last Thursday (see Gavel Grab). This action came after Senate Republicans agreed to break a months-long logjam and permit votes on some nominees in exchange for Democrats promising not to seek votes on four others, the Associated Press reported.

Even when the lame-duck deal has played out, President Obama will have won confirmation of sharply fewer judges in his first two years than any recent president, according to a Los Angeles Times article.

The controversial nominees who will not get votes are Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu, for the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and for federal district courts, Edward M. Chen in California, former Wisconsin Justice Louis Butler Jr.; and high-profile plaintiffs’ lawyer John McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island.

The brokering of the deal — which was attributed to unnamed sources in media accounts — renewed a spotlight on the increasingly partisan fighting over nominations in the Senate. The AP summed up:

“Judicial nominations have become intensely political in recent years as presidents seek approval for nominees who frequently spark opposition from outside interest groups aligned with the opposing party as well as from senators themselves.”

John McAdams, who teaches political science at  Marquette University political science professor, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that both Republicans and Democrats have engaged in gamesmanship by blocking judicial nominees.

“This is a game that the Republicans played a bit in the Clinton administration and the Democrats ramped it up a bit during the (George W.) Bush administration,” he said.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Obama had won confirmation as of Monday for 53 nominees to district and appeals courts, out of 103 nominations he had submitted. President Clinton secured confirmation for 126 of his nominees in the first two years he occupied the White House, when Democrats had a Senate majority.

President George W. Bush won confirmation of 100 of his judicial nominees during a corresponding period, although his party did not control the Senate for most of that time.

Before the Senate began confirming some judges this weekend, Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said some 30 Obama nominees for the federal bench were awaiting Senate confirmation.

Goodwin Liu is widely regarded as a potential Supreme Court nominee, and his nomination has been controversial since Obama submitted it. Gavel Grab has written extensively about the controversial nominees, and you can learn more about them by clicking here for Liu, here for Chen, here for Butler and here for McConnell.

To learn more about problems caused by partisan fighting over judicial nominations, check out Justice at Stake’s issues page on the topic.

Full post as published by The Gavel on December 21, 2010 (boomark / email).