This Week in the Senate: 11/23/2020

-

This week, the Senate is out of session, with senators back in their home-states for Thanksgiving. Pro forma sessions (to prevent recess appointments) will be held on November 24th and November 27th. Next week, the Senate will return to consider four nominations, including three to the judiciary.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weekly Update: 7/2/2021

-
Vacancies: Courts of Appeals: Current Vacancies: 7   ( ±  0  this week) Future Vacancies: 9   ( ±  0 ) District Courts: Current Vacancies: 72   ( +  1 ) William G. Young, District of Massachusetts, senior status, July 1, 2021, 3/13 seats vacant Future Vacancies: 20   ( - 1 ) Pending Nominations: Courts of Appeals: Pending before Senate Judiciary Committee without hearing: 1   ( ±  0  this week) Hearings held and still in Committee:  3   ( ±  0 ) Reported out of Committee/Pending on Executive Calendar: 1   ( ±  0 ) District Courts: Pending before Senate Judiciary Committee without hearing: 6   ( ±  0 ) Hearings held and still in Committee: 5   ( ±  0 ) Reported out of Committee/Pending on Executive Calendar: 1   ( ±  0 ) Court of Federal Claims: Pending before Senate Judiciary Committee without hearing: 0   ( ±  0 ) Hearings held and still in Committee: 0   ( ±  0 ) Reported out of Committee/Pending on Executive Calendar: 0   ( ±  0 ) Tax Court: Pending before Senate Finance Committee w
Read more

Federal Judges Push Back on the Judicial Conference's Advisory Opinion No. 117

-
In May, The New York Times  and The Wall Street Journal  published an article and op-ed , respectively, about opposition to the Judicial Conference Code of Conduct Committee proposal to ban judges from being members of the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society, along with similar organizations. Circuit Judges Greg Katsas, Andrew Oldham, William H. Pryor Jr., and Amul Thapar wrote in opposition to the proposal , and 206 other federal judges signed on. A brief analysis of the signatories of the letter follows. All numbers are drawn from the given numbers of judges on the bench on March 18, 2020, the date the letter was sent. First, it bears noting that the incumbent chair of the Code of Conduct Committee is Judge Ralph Erickson of the 8th Circuit. He's one of 8 Trump circuit court appointees to not list membership in the Federalist Society in his Senate paperwork, and (for obvious reasons) one of 5 to not sign the letter. Appointees of every president since
Read more

Will Trump Release a New SCOTUS List this Year? (Part 1)

-
This is the first half of a two-part series detailing the future of Trump's Supreme Court list. Past presidential elections have featured presidents promising to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court, or more general vows to appoint justices who follow a given judicial philosophy. Donald Trump followed up on that in 2016 by promising to appoint a justice in the mold of the recently-deceased Justice Antonin Scalia. To make that guarantee to the voters more concrete, the Trump campaign, in conjunction with the Heritage Foundation and other outside conservative groups, and the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo, released two separate lists in the course of the campaign. While this was certainly an unprecedented step at the time, today the Supreme Court is more visible than ever to the electorate, and the 2020 candidates have reacted accordingly. For instance, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has vowed to appoint an African-American woman to the
Read more