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Empty Judicial Seats in Federal Courts: Overzealous Partisan Politics Block Judicial Appointments Unnecessarily

By Andis Kaulins

In Judiciary: Legal logjam leaving judges' seats empty in federal courts at the Los Angeles Times, Carol J. Williams reports that:

"Almost one in eight federal judgeships is vacant in the country and legal scholars warn that the increasingly politicized confirmation process threatens the administration of justice across the nation....
Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy ... took note of the confirmation conflicts without assigning guilt to either political faction.
"It's important for the public to understand that the excellence of the federal judiciary is at risk," Kennedy said. "If judicial excellence is cast upon a sea of congressional indifference, the rule of law is imperiled."

Well, Justice Kennedy, "indifference" to judicial excellence is hardly the right word.

Quite the contrary, it is overzealous political Congressional meddling in the nomination process that is the problem. Of all the branches of government, Congress is the biggest problem in the USA today, because voters are increasingly electing unqualified populistic candidates to Congress, many of whom, possessed of limited knowledge and insufficient eduction about law and government, have no business being there.

Indeed, most members of Congress, because of their comparatively modest personal records and backgrounds (i.e. as compared to judicial nominees), would themselves not stand a chance at all as federal court nominees, and yet they can block qualified nominations to federal courts for openly selfish political reasons.

Full post as published by LawPundit on September 01, 2010 (boomark / email).