Judiciary Committee Members for the 116th Congress

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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 result is that the Judiciary Committee will now have 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats. The Democratic members of the committee aren't changing from before, but 3 new Republicans are joining the committee. Sen.-elect Josh Hawley (MO) is joining the committee, which he is especially suited to, considering he clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts. Also, for the first time ever, the committee will have female Republican members. Sen. Joni Ernst (IA) and Sen.-elect Marsha Blackburn (TN) are also joining the committee, per a Politico article from today. Ernst, in particular, was likely convinced to join the committee by her state's senior senator, Chuck Grassley, who is the outgoing chairman of the committee (he is still staying on as a regular member). After the Kavanaugh confirmation battle and the resulting hearings, it was clear that Senate Republicans had an optics problem when they had no women serving on the committee and Democrats had 4, including the Ranking Member, Dianne Feinstein.

A full committee roster is below.

 Republican:

  1. Lindsay Graham, Chairman-designee (SC)
  2. Chuck Grassley (IA)
  3. John Cornyn (TX)
  4. Mike Lee (UT)
  5. Ted Cruz (TX)
  6. Ben Sasse (NE)
  7. Mike Crapo (ID)
  8. Thom Tillis (NC)
  9. John Kennedy (LA)
  10. Joni Ernst (IA)
  11. Marsha Blacburn (TN)
  12. Josh Hawley (MO)

Democratic:

  1. Dianne Feinstein, Ranking Member (CA)
  2. Patrick Leahy (VT)
  3. Dick Durbin (IL)
  4. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI)
  5. Amy Klobuchar (MN)
  6. Chris Coons (DE)
  7. Richard Blumenthal (CT)
  8. Mazie Hirono (HI)
  9. Cory Booker (NJ)
  10. Kamala Harris (CA)

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 4, 2019 at 7:13 PM

    The Senate calendar has been completely cleared now. Hopefully they send everyone back very soon.

    ReplyDelete

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