The Judicial Nominations Blog

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to hold  an executive business meeting to move forward with numerous nominations, including that of William Barr to be the next attorney general, and Donald Washington to direct the U.S. Marshals Service. But this post is focused mainly on the 44 other nominees present on the list. There are almost four dozen candidates up for judgeships on the list, including 6 to the courts of appeals (Bridget Bade for the Ninth Circuit, Paul Matey for the Third Circuit, Eric Miller for the Ninth Circuit, Eric E. Murphy and Chad Readler for the Sixth Circuit, and Allison Jones Rushing for the Fourth Circuit), 34 district court nominees, 2 nominees to the Court of Federal Claims, and 2 to the Court of International Trade. Bade was first nominated to the Ninth Circuit late last summer with the support of both Sens. Jeff Flake and Jon Kyl (R-AZ), but now the Grand Canyon State has a split Senate delegation, with Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Mart...

Today, the White House renominated many of the judicial nominees left over from last year's session, almost 3 weeks after the 116th Congress began. Out of the 70 Article III and 8 Article I  nominations returned to the president, we saw 51 renominations, a considerable drop in number from the end of last year. I will note that an absence on today's list does not bar any of the missing nominees from being renominated in the near future, but since they weren't submitted to the Senate today for any number of reasons, those issues would have to be cleared up to ensure a successful resolution to the confirmation process. Those missing (whom I discuss in more detail in past posts linked above) include former district court nominees Thomas Farr , Gordon Giampietro, Jon Katchen , and John M. O'Connor , and former Court of Federal Claims nominee Maureen Ohlhausen . These failed nominees sum up to 5, but there are still 22 nominees left to make up the difference bet...

Today, the White House announced its 19th batch of judicial nominations , the first of 2019 and the 116th Congress. It included 6 district court nominees, many to courts with judicial emergencies , as defined by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The nominees include: Greg G. Guidry , a Justice on the Louisiana Supreme Court , to the Eastern District of Louisiana. While ordinarily it could be considered a demotion for state supreme court justices to get nominated to federal district courts, the Trump administration has made some sort of habit out of it, nominating Justice Patrick Wyrick to the Western District of Oklahoma last year. Before joining the state bench, Guidry was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana. If confirmed, Guidry would fill 1 of the 2 vacancies on the district court's bench, with Wendy Vitter already waiting to be confirmed for the other seat. Wes Hendrix, an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern...

The Senate adjourned its 2018 session last week without voting on 70 pending judicial nominees. As sessions of a Congress close, nominations typically expire, per the body's rules. In this case, Rule XXXI governs , stating: 6.  Nominations neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are made shall not be acted upon at any succeeding session without being again made to the Senate by the President; and if the Senate shall adjourn or take a recess for more than thirty days, all nominations pending and not finally acted upon at the time of taking such adjournment or recess shall be returned by the Secretary to the President, and shall not again be considered unless they shall again be made to the Senate by the President. Ordinarily, this is just a procedural hiccup in the process, and nominations are routinely returned to the president at the end of sessions and then renominated in short order. But a week after the end of the 115th Congress, these names haven...

With the sine die  adjournment of the Senate last week, numerous nominations were returned to the White House. Among them were 8 for the Article I courts, which are part of the executive branch and whose judges serve 15-year terms. Among the nominations returned to the president were 4 for the U.S. Tax Court, which uniquely has oversight by the Senate Finance Committee. 1 nominee, IRS attorney Courtney Jones, was reported by the Finance Committee before the end of the session. 3 other nominees, Covington & Burling partner Emin Toro , Justice Department lawyer Travis Greaves, and Senior Judge Mark Holmes didn't see any progress on their nominations. For Jones, her path to confirmation involves an expected renomination later this month, a vote by the committee, and a final confirmation vote (for the Tax Court, nominations have usually been confirmed by bipartisan voice votes without burning up floor time). The other three nominees require hearings, committee votes, and confir...

It's been known for a while that changes would come to the composition of the Senate Judiciary Committee for the 116th Congress. For starters, two Republican members of the committee, Sens. Orrin Hatch (UT) and Jeff Flake (AZ), retired from the body, leaving at least two vacant seats. But the Senate GOP Conference also expanded from 51 members to 53, changing the ratios of Republican to Democratic members on each committee in the process. During the last year, the committee had 11 Republican members and 10 Democrats, and the logical assumption to make after the drop in Democratic membership in the new Senate (no members of the committee minority themselves left the body) was that there would be fewer Democratic slots. Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, however, negotiated to prevent that from happening , in order to keep Sen. Kamala Harris (CA), the junior Democrat on the panel, from losing her seat (committees typically operate on a last on, first off seniority system). The end ...

With the start of the new session of Congress tomorrow, the political landscape in Washington, D.C. is going to change dramatically. The unified Republican control of federal government will come to an end, and control of the House of Representatives will officially change hands to the Democratic party, leading to even more gridlock in the halls of the Capitol Building (if that's even possible!). Any legislation that the GOP might have hoped to pass on their own accord is dead at this point, and that means that the Senate's attention will be far more focused on, as some senators are known to put it, the "personnel business". That's where this blog jumps in. The 115th Congress saw the confirmations of 2 Supreme Court Justices, 30 U.S. Circuit Judges, and 53 U.S. District Judges . The expanded Senate GOP is not going to slow down in this avenue anytime soon, especially because they don't have much more to do, aside from executive branch nominees. The Judic...