{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://www.leahy.senate.gov/press/statement-of-senator-patrick-leahy-d-vt-chairman-senate-judiciary-committee-on-judicial-nominations-in-2013", "Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee, On Judicial Nominations in 2013", "2013-12-20", "2013", "2013-12", "Democrat", "House", "VT", "Patrick Leahy", "L000174", "www.leahy.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "12.20.13\n\t\t\t Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee, On Judicial Nominations in 2013 \n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tRepublicans are once again\u2014for the fifth year in a row\u2014rejecting the longstanding Senate practice of scheduling confirmation votes on consensus nominees before the end of the session.\u00a0\r\nRather than working in a bipartisan fashion to confirm consensus nominees to fill judgeships as we wind down for the year, Senate Republicans have deliberately refused to agree to vote on consensus nominees who could and should be confirmed without delay.\u00a0 The result is that we will spend a significant portion of the next year on the Senate floor doing work that should have been completed this year.\u00a0 And now the Republican abuse of Senate rules has further escalated\u2014Republicans have for the first time ever, refused to allow any currently pending judicial nominees to be held over so that they could be ready for immediate action next year.\u00a0 For purely political reasons, Senate Republicans are forcing us to duplicate work next year that we have already completed in 2013.\u00a0 It is a waste of taxpayer dollars and valuable resources that could be spent addressing the difficult issues facing our Nation.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\r\nAs it stands, nine judicial nominations pending on the Senate Executive Calendar\u2014all reported by the Judiciary Committee unanimously or with significant bipartisan support\u2014are being returned to the President.\u00a0 Another 15 judicial nominees who could have been reported to the full Senate and confirmed by the end of this year had Senate Republicans not blocked the Judiciary Committee\u2019s ability to meet to report these nominees to the full Senate are being returned to the President.\u00a0 Another 31 judicial nominees pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee will also be returned to the President.\u00a0 Each of these nominations represents a significant amount of work by the nominees themselves, the White House, the Department of Justice, and Senate staff on both sides of the aisle.\u00a0 The only judicial nomination not being returned to the President is Robert Wilkins\u2019 nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, because the procedural posture of his nomination enables the Senate to hold his nomination over until next year.\u00a0 I am pleased that Judge Wilkins\u2019 nomination will not be returned, which allows for quick action next year, but there is no good reason to return any of the other 55 judicial nominations pending in the Senate.\u00a0\r\nSenate Republicans\u2019 persistent obstruction over the last five years has led to record high vacancies in Federal courts throughout the country.\u00a0 At the end of 2009, Senate Republicans left 10 nominations on the Executive Calendar without a vote.\u00a0 Two of those nominations were returned to the President, and it subsequently took nine months for the Senate to take action on the other eight.\u00a0 This resulted in the lowest one-year confirmation total in at least 35 years.\u00a0 At the end of 2010 and again in 2011, Senate Republicans left 19 nominations on the Senate Executive Calendar.\u00a0 It then took nearly half the following years for the Senate to confirm these nominees.\u00a0 Last year they blocked 11 judicial nominees from votes and refused to expedite consideration of others who had already had hearings.\u00a0 And this year, they have escalated their obstruction and delay of judicial nominations by indiscriminately requiring that nominees be sent back to the President at the end of this first session of the 113th Congress.\u00a0 The effect of which is to needlessly cause delay in the Senate\u2019s ability to process these nominations and prevent more judges from getting to work for the American people.\r\nSenate Republicans will argue that the change in Senate precedent a few weeks ago on nominations is the cause of their refusal to cooperate, but history shows that this is simply not true.\u00a0 The truth is, from the first day President Obama took office, Senate Republicans pursued a path of delay and obstruction on judicial nominees that departed dramatically from Senate tradition.\u00a0 That it took five years into this presidency for the rules to change has been the result of certain senators, including me, who have been reluctant to change prior Senate practice.\u00a0 But once the government stops functioning, the right course of action is to do what needs to be done so that the American people have a government that works to make their lives better.\u00a0 The American people do not want to hear about tit-for-tat politics or their representatives playing the blame game.\u00a0 They are tired of Congress wasting time and resources when there is so much to be done.\u00a0 They want their representatives to work, vote, and fulfill their constitutional obligations.\u00a0 They want their representatives to fulfill their duty of advice and consent so that our courts have the necessary judges to provide speedy, quality justice.\r\nThe reality, unfortunately, falls short of the American peoples\u2019 expectation.\u00a0 During 2013, the same obstruction that has plagued the Senate during the first term of the Obama Administration continued to delay the rate of confirmations to appointments on the Federal bench.\u00a0 The 113th Congress began with a high level of vacancies on the Federal Judiciary.\u00a0 As of January 2013, there were 77 vacancies in the Federal judiciary, and, of these, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts determined 27 of them to be \u201cjudicial emergencies.\u201d\u00a0 Over the course of 2013, the number of vacancies has hovered around 90.\u00a0 Right now, at the end of the fifth year of the Obama administration, there are a total of 88 judicial vacancies, 36 of which are judicial emergency vacancies.\u00a0 In stark contrast, at the end of the fifth year of the Bush administration, there were less than 50 judicial vacancies, and only 16 of those were judicial emergency vacancies.\u00a0\r\nAs the year closes, judicial vacancies remain at crisis levels.\u00a0 However, despite these high levels, Republican obstructionism continues to impose severe delays on the confirmations process, particularly in those states that faced significant obstruction from Republican home state Senators, such as Arizona and Texas.\u00a0\r\nA year after the American people voted to re-elect President Obama, Senate Republicans decided to escalate their obstruction to an unimaginable level this year, preventing the President from filling any of the three vacancies on what is often considered the second most important court in the Nation\u2014the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.\u00a0 Senate Republicans chose to filibuster all three nominees to that court, without even considering their qualifications.\u00a0\u00a0 This type of wholesale obstruction was simply unacceptable.\r\nRepublicans attempted to \u00adjustify their opposition to filling any of the three vacancies on the D.C. Circuit by arguing that the court\u2019s caseload did not warrant the appointments.\u00a0 We all knew that this was a transparent attempt to prevent a Democratic president from appointing judges to this court.\u00a0 In 2003, the Senate unanimously confirmed John Roberts by voice vote to be the ninth judge on the D.C. Circuit\u2014at a time when its caseload was lower than it is today.\u00a0 In fact, his confirmation marked the lowest caseload level per judge on the D.C. Circuit in 20 years.\u00a0 Not a single Senate Republican raised any concerns about whether the caseload warranted his confirmation, and during the Bush administration, they voted to confirm four judges to the D.C. Circuit, providing the court with 11 active judges.\u00a0 In light of this double-standard, I finally agreed that past precedent had to be revisited because a faction of the minority party should not be permitted to nullify an election by blocking the President\u2019s nominees without regard to their qualifications.\u00a0\r\nI am pleased to say that in the last few weeks, after taking action, we were finally able to confirm Patricia Millett and Nina Pillard \u2013 two highly qualified attorneys \u2013 to the ninth and tenth seats on the D.C. Circuit.\u00a0 With the confirmation of these two women, there will now be five women and five men actively serving as judges on the D.C. Circuit\u2014this is an historic first for any Federal appellate court.\u00a0 I am, however, disappointed that Senate Republicans refused to allow us to take a vote on Judge Robert Wilkins, another well qualified nominee whose confirmation would enable the D.C. Circuit to function at full strength, with 11 judges.\u00a0 I am hopeful that we will have a vote on his nomination early next year.\r\nOther historic firsts for women serving on our Federal judiciary also occurred this year.\u00a0 In April, Jane Kelly became the first woman from Iowa to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit, and, in May, Shelly Dick was confirmed as the first woman to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.\u00a0 Late last week, after the Majority Leader was forced to file cloture over Republican opposition to moving forward on district court nominees, three more nominees were confirmed to serve as the first women on their respective courts: Elizabeth Wolford, to be U.S. District Judge for the Western District of New York; Landya McCafferty, to be U.S. District Judge for the District of New Hampshire; and Susan Watters to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Montana.\u00a0\r\nAfter an extraordinarily long delay of nearly 22 months since his nomination, we were also finally able to confirm Brian Davis to fill a judicial emergency vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.\u00a0 I am disappointed that it required overcoming a Republican filibuster on his nomination.\u00a0 He is a superb nominee.\u00a0 The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has unanimously rated him to be \u201cWell Qualified\u201d to serve on the Federal bench.\u00a0 For the past 20 years he has served as a state court judge, where he has presided over 600 cases in both civil and criminal matters that have gone to verdict or judgment.\u00a0 Prior to becoming a state court judge, he served for a total of nine years as a state prosecutor, including three years as Chief Assistant State Attorney. \u00a0Judge Davis also has experience in private practice, where he was a partner at the law firm of Terrell Hogan.\u00a0 He will make a fine Federal judge.\r\nI am pleased that despite continued Republican attempts to block or delay confirmation of judicial nominees, we were able to continue to move forward on these and other nominees this year.\u00a0 I have heard, however, some suggestion that Republicans will now seek to delay judicial nominations by exploiting a Senate tradition known as the \u201cblue slip.\u201d\u00a0 The Constitution requires that judicial appointments be made \u201cwith the Advice and Consent of the Senate.\u201d\u00a0 For nearly 100 years, Chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Committee have sought to give meaning to this constitutional edict by a blue slip policy to ensure that senators are given an opportunity to advise the President about potential judicial nominees before they are nominated to fill lifetime positions in their home state.\u00a0 A blue slip is a piece of paper sent by the Chairman to home state senators asking that it be signed and returned with an indication of whether they approve of or oppose the judicial nomination made by the President.\u00a0\r\nOver the years, other Chairmen have taken a more flexible view of the blue slips, but during my chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have protected the rights of Senators \u2013 whether Republican or Democrat \u2013 to be meaningfully consulted.\u00a0 Honoring the blue slip policy allows judicial nominations to move forward in committee only after receiving positive blue slips from home state senators. \u00a0Another improvement I made when I first became Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2001 was to make home state senators more accountable for their blue slip decisions by making the process transparent for the first time.\u00a0 I will continue to honor the blue slip policy as it currently stands, but I hope that Republicans will not abuse this tradition and force me to reconsider.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\r\nAs we approach the new year, I hope that reasonable Republicans will join us in restoring the Senate\u2019s ability to fulfill its constitutional duties and do its work for the American people.\r\n# # # # #\r\n\u00a0\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t Press Contact \n\t\t\t\tPress Contact  David Carle: 202-224-3693", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://www.leahy.senate.gov/press/statement-of-senator-patrick-leahy-d-vt-chairman-senate-judiciary-committee-on-judicial-nominations-in-2013"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4986940659582615, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}