Biden attempts to diversify federal courts

Trump’s imprint on the judiciary has been felt most acutely at the supreme court, where a third of the justices were appointed by the former president. In the past year, the court has curtailed the federal government’s ability to set climate policy and struck down a New York law aimed at regulating the carrying of firearms in public. Most notably, the court overturned a half-century of precedent by ending federal protections for abortion access.

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So far, Biden has moved at an impressive clip to get liberal judges confirmed to federal courts. In 2021, the president oversaw more first-year federal court appointments than any president since John F Kennedy.

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In addition to their sizable numbers, Biden’s judicial nominees are notable for their racial, gender and professional diversity – particularly considering how long the highest US courts have been dominated by white men. Nearly three-quarters of Biden’s court nominees have been women, and almost two-thirds have been people of color. Biden has also made a point to nominate many former public defenders and civil rights lawyers, who have been historically underrepresented among federal judges.

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The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has successfully advanced dozens of Biden’s nominations through the chamber despite Republican efforts to block or at least delay confirmation. Because the Senate was evenly divided over the past two years, Democrats and Republicans held the same number of seats on the judiciary committee. Republicans used that evenly divided power to create a deadlock on committee votes and force Democrats to deploy additional, time-consuming procedural measures to approve judicial nominations.

With Raphael Warnock’s victory in the Georgia special election this month, Democrats will gain a seat on the judiciary committee. Even with Kyrsten Sinema’s unexpected announcement this month that she will change her party affiliation to independent, Democrats are still expected to have majorities on Senate committees.

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But Democrats still have their work cut out for them to match Trump’s judicial record. Over his single term in office, Trump remade the federal judiciary, placing very conservative judges on some of the most influential courts in the country. In addition to his three supreme court justices, Trump appointed 54 federal appellate judges and 174 district court judges, marking the largest single-term total of any president since Jimmy Carter.

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By the time Trump stepped down, he had nominated more than a quarter of all actively serving federal judges.

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To help ease the confirmation process for some nominees, Humphrey’s group and other progressive organizations have called on Senate Democrats to reconsider the practice of “blue slips”.

The blue slip policy gives home-state senators the option to block district court nominees from even receiving a hearing, which has made it difficult for Democrats to fill vacancies in states with at least one Republican senator.

  Guardian

That is such a bizarre practice, whose details seem to change with every presidency.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.