Litigation

New Report Explores Obama Judicial Confirmations

By Peter Hardin

President Obama won confirmation for a lower rate of his federal district court nominees than either of his two predecessors in a corresponding period, according to an expert on judicial nominations.

Russell Wheeler, Visiting Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, has written one of his intermittent, authoritative reports, this latest one entitled “Judicial Nominations and Confirmations in the 111th Senate and What to Look for in the 112th.”

While Gavel Grab has tracked the push and pull of partisan politicking over Obama’s nominees, Wheeler’s report provides exhaustive data, tables for comparison and a touch of commentary.

Wheeler writes, for example, that the “most noteworthy aspect” of the 111th Senate’s judicial confirmation record may be its lower rate for district judge nominees. Obama won confirmation of 56 percent of them, compared in corresponding periods to 85 percent for President George W. Bush (whose party did not control the Senate for most of that time) and 91 percent for President Bill Clinton.

Republican opposition to these Obama nominees “seems, except for a few instances, rooted in causes other than controversy over the nominees? qualifications,” Wheeler says. He states that the lower confirmation rate was due to the “opposition?s use of Senate rules” to delay action.

On nominees for the courts of appeals, Obama’s confirmation rate basically matched Bush’s but not Clinton’s, Wheeler writes.

On the other hand, he says Obama  had “a slightly greater effect than either predecessor in their first two years in changing the party-of-appointing president balance on the courts of appeal.” The appeals courts with a majority of appointees named by Republicans declined from nine to seven, and those with Democratic appointee majorities increased from two to four.

These other key facts from the report were highlighted in its executive summary:

• The Obama  appointees “included, proportionately, fewer white males and members of the private bar.”
• The president’s  district court nominees from states where senators used panels to screen potential candidates “don?t appear much different from nominees in other states in terms of background or how they fared in the nomination and confirmation process.”

Nineteen of Obama’s judicial nominees were confirmed during the recent lame duck session, but the Senate failed to vote on another 19. The latter nominees “are likely to stay in limbo for the foreseeable future,” Politico reports. According to NPR, the president is expected to renominate more than a dozen of the candidates this week.

Full post as published by The Gavel on January 05, 2011 (boomark / email).