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Senate Rushes to Confirm Obama’s Judicial Nominees

The do-nothing Congress is actually doing something: confirming Obama’s judicial appointments, after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last fall exercised what has become known as the “nuclear option”

____ Thus far in his presidency, Obama has gotten through 300 nominees, or 35 more than George W. Bush at the same point in his presidency. Pending before the Senate are 22 more nominations, four to circuit courts and 18 to the district courts, with another 18 nominations scheduled before the Judiciary Committee. There are currently 74 vacancies on the federal bench.

The swift pace of confirmation comes after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last November exercised what has come to be known as the “nuclear option,” for its potential to unilaterally change Senate rules to strip the minority of the ability to filibuster all of the President’s judicial nominees except those to the Supreme Court. Reid originally changed the rules in order to fill three vacancies on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, known as the second-most powerful court in the land because it reviews most regulators appeals.

Republicans argued the court’s workload did not warrant a full bench and worried that three Democratic nominees would tilt it leftward for a generation. Until November, the court was more evenly split. Democrats argued that the time it takes to confirm appellate appointees has grown from an average of 30 days under Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson to 60 days under Ronald Reagan to 402 days for George W. Bush and 255 days under Obama.

After Reid triggered the nuclear option, all three DC Circuit Court appointees were confirmed. But that also opened the floodgates for other judicial appointments. Obama “has managed to turn around the break down on courts of appeals: they used to be 60% to 40% Republican and now 56% of the active judges are Democratic appointees,” says Russell Wheeler, an expert on U.S. courts at The Brookings Institution. “Obama’s going to have a solid legacy.”


read more: http://time.com/96809/senate-rushes-to-confirm-obamas-judicial-nominees/