BIDEN HAS A CHANCE TO APPOINT MORE LIBERAL JUDGES--BUT IT ALL COMES DOWN TO GEORGIA [View all]

[Demovictory9]

Can Biden Swing the Courts Left?
Liberal-leaning judges have been waiting out Trump’s presidency to retire, creating a potential opening for Biden to make appointments.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/12/biden-appoint-liberal-judges

After blocking Barack Obama’s last batch of judicial nominees, Mitch McConnell has spent the last four years methodically stacking the courts with conservatives, including three of nine justices on the Supreme Court. He’ll continue to do so during the lame duck session, ensuring Donald Trump’s imprint on the nation will last long after his presidency ends. And yet, despite McConnell’s confirmation blitz, there’ll still be vacancies for Joe Biden to fill, especially if a spate of liberal-leaning judges who have been waiting out Trump’s term retire when the new administration takes over, as many on the federal bench are expected to do.

Biden, then, will have an opportunity in the coming years to add more liberal judges to the courts and dilute, if not erase, the influence of McConnell and Trump. “I fully expect a Biden administration to prioritize putting champions of the cause of justice on the bench,” Daniel L. Goldberg, legal director for the Alliance for Justice, told Law360 on Monday. The catch? He’ll only be able to do so if he can confirm them, and that will require the Democrats’ capturing the Senate in Georgia’s runoff races next month—or Republicans finding it in their hearts to go along with his picks, something that seems difficult to imagine based on the last several years.

“If the last two years of the Obama administration were any indication, they’ll freeze them out,” Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the minority whip and a potential Judiciary Committee chair, told Politico. “Hope springs eternal but I believe in history.”

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The prospect of Republicans holding Biden’s judicial appointments hostage further underscores the stakes of the Georgia run-off. Should Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff unseat the incumbents January 5, the upper chamber will be split 50–50 between Democrats and Republicans, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to cast the deciding vote on Biden’s Cabinet and judicial picks, giving him a great deal more latitude to make choices that the GOP might not sign off on. But if either Kelly Loeffler or David Perdue win, it’ll be a much tougher road ahead for Biden. “I would hope,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons told Politico, “that we don’t end up in a place where McConnell is trying to keep vacancies open for 2025.”