How Obama Can Send an Important Message, By Filling the Nation's Most Protracted Judicial Vacancy

[usregimechange]

By CARL TOBIAS

For two decades, accusations and recriminations, partisan sniping and incessant paybacks have punctuated federal judicial selection. The quintessential example is the still-unoccupied vacancy created in the summer of 1994, when J. Dickson Phillips, a distinguished jurist on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, assumed senior status. A replacement has yet to be chosen for Phillips, so the fourteen-year opening in his judgeship is clearly the entire nation's most protracted.

Because this vacancy exemplifies much that plagues judicial appointments President Barack Obama should immediately institute an effective selection process and promptly name a well-qualified judge to this empty seat. By doing so, Obama would not only resolve a longtime problem, but would also send a strong message that his appointments to the federal judiciary will be expeditious, fair, and marked by attention to both parties' input.

The Story of the Fourth Circuit's Unconscionably Long Vacancy

The Fourth Circuit now has openings in four of the fifteen active judgeships authorized for the tribunal, which is the court of last resort for all but one percent of appeals from North Carolina, Maryland, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. The D.C., Third and Ninth Circuits each have two vacancies, while the other eight appellate courts have only one empty position, or none at all. Openings in a quarter of a tribunal's judgeships are significant because they can frustrate the delivery of justice. Among all the federal appeals courts, the Fourth Circuit grants the smallest percentages of published opinions and oral arguments, which are valuable yardsticks of appellate justice. These practices may well reflect the court's understaffed nature.

A few factors explain why Judge Phillips's seat has been unfilled for nearly one- and-a-half decades. To begin, because the jurist assumed senior status on July 31, 1994, it was effectively too late, in a mid-term election year, for the Senate to approve a replacement, had President Bill Clinton nominated a candidate. It took the President until late December 1995 to nominate a candidate: James Beaty, Jr., a U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of North Carolina. However, the GOP Senate majority failed to evaluate Beaty seriously -- in part because Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) opposed the jurist.

More:

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20090204_tobias.html

[pnorman]

1. That was brand new to me!

Thanks for the heads up. I'll be following that issue in the days to come.

pnorman

[usregimechange]

3. This will help:

http://www.usdoj.gov/olp/judicialnominations111.htm

[snowbear]

2. Speaking of judicial appointments, this is interesting (re: Pat Leahy)

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Feb. 4, 2009 – 2:31 p.m.

Leahy Coy on New ‘Blue Slip’ Policy

By Keith Perine, CQ Staff

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy is being coy about whether he will keep honoring an informal committee tradition that would allow Republican senators to block some of President Obama’s judicial nominees quietly, without resorting to a filibuster.

At issue is the committee’s “blue slip” policy, whereby nominees for appellate and district courts do not advance without the approval of both home state senators. The practice, named for the color of the paper that senators use to signal their approval or disapproval, dates back to at least 1917.

But it is up to the committee chairman to decide whether and how to observe the practice, and different chairmen have done it differently. Leahy honored the tradition during the last Congress, when a Republican was in the White House. But he might be having a change of heart now. “I intend to look very carefully at it,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

There are 27 states with at least one Republican senator, and 14 of those states have two GOP senators.

Continued: http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003024470

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[ColbertWatcher]

5. I did not know this.

I have saved your tidbit for all of eternity: http://www.wikiality.com/Blue_Slip_Policy

[ColbertWatcher]

4. And he better put in a liberal.

Or, at the very least, someone not in the Federalist Society.