Just 10 days after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, NBC News reported that the new White House team and Senate Democrats were “embarking on a mission to shape the courts after Republicans overhauled them in the last four years.”
Updating our earlier coverage, it looks like that mission is off to a good start. HuffPost‘s Jennifer Bendery highlighted the historical context:
President Joe Biden quietly hit a milestone on Thursday: With the help of Senate Democrats, he has confirmed more lifetime federal judges than any president has done in more than 50 years by this point in their first six months in office. With the Senate’s latest confirmation of Candace Jackson-Akiwumi to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, Biden has confirmed a total of seven judges.
Of the seven Biden nominees who’ve been confirmed so far, five are district court judges, while two are circuit court judges.
At first blush, seven may not seem like an especially large number, especially given the fact that the federal judiciary has several hundred court seats. But as Bendery’s report makes clear, recent history suggests Biden’s tally is quite strong:
By this point in their presidencies, Donald Trump had confirmed two lifetime federal judges (one of whom was a Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch), Barack Obama had confirmed zero, George W. Bush had confirmed zero, Bill Clinton had confirmed zero, George H.W. Bush had confirmed four, Ronald Reagan had confirmed zero, and Jimmy Carter had confirmed four.
In fact, no president has seen this many judicial confirmations at this point in their term since 1969.
For much of the left, the focus on the judiciary is welcome. As we’ve discussed on several occasions, Republicans in the Trump era prioritized judicial nominees above almost every other consideration. The campaign was as relentless as it was effective: the former president managed to appoint about 230 judges to the federal courts. That’s not as many as his recent two-term predecessors, but it was a striking tally for a failed one-term president who never won the popular vote.
With this in mind, the Biden White House has emphasized judicial nominees to a degree without modern precedent, and the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate appears to recognize the significance of the issue. As of this morning, there are 76 vacancies on the federal bench — more if we include the Court of International Trade and the Court of Federal Claims — and that number is likely to be around 100 later this year as sitting judges retire and take senior status. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, has said filling every vacancy by the end of 2022 is his party’s “very prudent goal.” That’s an ambitious target, which will require a concerted effort on the part of Democratic leaders, but so far, the relevant players appear to be taking the right steps in a smart direction. Postscript: For what it’s worth, the Senate Democratic majority could curtail their August break and spend that time confirming federal judges, just as Republicans did a few years ago. All Senate Democratic leaders would have to do is keep working and making the most of their precious time.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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