federal judicial appointments

Andrew Cohen on Judicial Nominees and Tomorrow’s Senate Session

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here, h/t How Appealing.

An excerpt:

Say you are having a bourbon tonight with your neighbor and you tell him:

The Senate has 17 smart, willing people ready to come to work for the federal government. They have been vetted by their profession. They have been vetted by the White House. And they have been vetted by the Congress in the form of the Judiciary Committee. There is a great need for these people to be approved so that they can get to work. And there’s already been evidence that there is little to no substantive opposition to their nominations. Yet they cannot get about their vital jobs because one party in Congress wants to slow down the pace of the president’s judicial nominations.

How would your neighbor respond? Would he say that the nation is better off letting those 17 would-be judges cool their heels for another few months while litigants all over America are forced to wait longer for their day in court? Would he say that “judicial emergencies” are just a”manufactured” controversy and that all those litigants deserve to wait for justice because the president made a few recess appointments a while ago? Or would he just shake his head and say: “No wonder congressional popularity is at an all-time low.”

Keith Harper for the Tenth Circuit Drawing Intense Opposition

Matthew L.M. Fletcher2 Comments

From the Tulsa World via Pechanga:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering a Washington, D.C., attorney and former adviser to the president’s campaign to fill an appeals court vacancy created by the resignation of veteran Judge Robert Henry of Oklahoma, the Tulsa World has learned.

If officially nominated for what is viewed as an Oklahoma seat on the court, Keith Harper is expected to draw strong opposition from key Oklahoma Democrats and Republicans.

The White House move to vet Harper for the slot on the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is being described as an “insult” to the state and even “stupid.”

Opposition appears to be coalescing around the fact that Harper is not from Oklahoma and the way the White House has excluded certain key players from the process to fill the post.

Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe vowed to do whatever needs to be done to block the nomination, if it ever gets to the Senate.

Inhofe’s options range from the so-called “blue slip” process, which allows senators to make their wishes known privately on judicial nominations and can be used to kill a nomination, to an outright hold.

“It is stupid,” he said. “If they are serious about doing something with this guy, there were ways they could have done it that would have been much more palatable to us.”

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WSJ: Obama and the Federal Judiciary

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From WSJ (via How Appealing):

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is expected to have a speedy and significant impact on a number of federal courts of appeal, with the potential to lessen the conservative influence that several of these courts now wield.

Given significant vacancies in some the nation’s 13 federal appellate courts, Mr. Obama’s appointments may shape the ways laws are interpreted across the country. “He really has an enormous opportunity,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia and expert on the federal judiciary. “At least initially, I don’t see him having much trouble getting his seats filled.”

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Obama vs. McCain and the Federal Judiciary

Matthew L.M. Fletcher9 Comments

The NYT’s editorial today on the impact of the Presidential election on the federal judiciary should be especially salient to tribal advocates. Sen. McCain promises to continue to stock the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court with arch-conservatives like Justices Scalia and Thomas.  Sen. Obama has been more circumspect in his comments about federal judicial appointments, but the NYT editors (and we agree) assume he will appoint moderate liberals like Justice Breyer to the Court.

There are plenty of American Indian voters who have decided to back Sen. McCain, but they should reconsider in light of the import of his promises relating to the federal judiciary.

Consider what eight years of the Bush II Administration did to tribal interests, and add that to the 12 years of the Reagan and Bush I Administrations. Federal Indian law professors now recognize in general that 1986 or so was a major turning point in the success of tribal interests before the Supreme Court. From 1959 to 1986, tribal interests prevailed about 55-60 percent of the time before the Court, when the majority of the Court were liberals and centrists. Since then, they have lost more than 75 percent of the time. Seven of the nine current Justices are Republican appointees.

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