As of November 1, , 28 of the nominees have been confirmed. Ballotpedia publishes the federal vacancy count report tracking vacancies, nominations, and confirmations to all United States Article III federal courts each month. In the most recent report covering activity in October , there were 72 Article III vacancies in the federal judiciary. Of those vacancies, 23 had pending nominations For this data, pending nominations are official nominations sent by the president to the U.
They do not include individuals whom the president has announced his intent to nominate. To learn more about current vacancies in the federal judiciary, click here.
The following chart from the monthly federal vacancy count report for November 1, , details the number of appointments made by President Biden to each type of Article III federal court since taking office. This chart is updated at the start of each month with new appointments data. The following chart shows the total judgeship appointments made by each president from to The following chart shows the judgeship appointments by court made by each president from to The U.
Court of Federal Claims, previously known as the U. The following chart shows the average number of judicial appointments per year in office by presidents from to The chart below shows the number of appeals court judges confirmed by the U. Senate through November 1 of the first year of each president's term in office. At this point in the term, President Biden had made the most appeals court appointments with nine.
President Trump had six, President George W. Bush had four, Presidents Reagan and George H. Bush had three, President Clinton had two, and President Obama had one.
The chart below shows the number of district court judges confirmed by the U. At this point in the term, President Biden made the most district court appointments with President Reagan made 16, the second most for the presidents under study for this period.
President Obama had appointed the fewest with three. Ballotpedia features , encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers. Click here to contact our editorial staff, and click here to report an error. Click here to contact us for media inquiries, and please donate here to support our continued expansion.
Share this page Follow Ballotpedia. What's on your ballot? Jump to: navigation , search. The result of his consultations and rigorous process is the decision to nominate a thoughtful, meticulous, moderate judge for the Supreme Court with a keen ability for building consensus. The President fully expects Congress to honor their constitutional responsibility and allow this nominee a hearing and a vote.
Judge Garland is a preeminent member of the legal profession with outstanding legal ability and exceptional breadth of experience. He meets the highest standards of integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament.
Read the ABA statement. The argument about the vacancy isn't entirely political. Circuit have been displayed in abundance by Judge Garland as a member of that Court. Lawyer for the National Rifle Association Read the quote in context. Current Position: Chief Judge of the U.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. As Chief Judge of the most important federal appeals court in the nation, no one is more qualified to immediately serve on the Supreme Court than Merrick Garland. A meticulous jurist with a record of forging consensus among judges across the ideological spectrum, he was confirmed to sit on the U.
Court of Appeals in D. Today, as Chief Judge of the D. Circuit, Judge Garland has more federal judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in history. Took steps as a government attorney to ensure proper respect for the rights of criminal defendants, helping develop policies that require prosecutors to conduct an individual assessment of each case when making charging decisions, rather than just charging with the most serious offense possible.
Born and raised in Illinois by a mother who served as a community volunteer and a father who ran a small business out of the family home, Chief Judge Garland was valedictorian of his public high school class. He won scholarships to attend Harvard University, where he graduated summa cum laude , and Harvard Law School, where he received his law degree magna cum laude and served on the Harvard Law Review. While in college, Garland worked a summer job as a shoe store stock clerk and sold his comic book collection to help pay his tuition.
As a law student, he earned room and board by counseling undergraduates. In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, he led the investigation and prosecution that ultimately brought Timothy McVeigh to justice. As a mentor to his law clerks and a tutor to elementary school children, he is a dedicated and compassionate public servant who will conservatives and progressives praise for his rigorous intellect, his respect for the role of the judiciary, and his mastery of the law. Skip to Content Skip to Navigation.
President Obama's Supreme Court Nomination. Go To Top. Watch on YouTube. Leahy continued to defend the Eastland Rule well into the Trump administration. In , in a preview of how they would later treat the Garland nomination, Senate Republicans filibustered three Obama nominees to the powerful DC Circuit in an effort to keep Democrats from gaining a majority on that court. In response, Democrats fundamentally altered the filibuster to allow lower court judges to be confirmed by a simple majority.
Under the old rules, the minority party could block a vote on any nominee, and it took 60 votes to end that filibuster. Now, only 51 votes are required to move forward to a confirmation vote. One consequence of filibuster reform is that it enabled Democrats to fill seats that Republicans held open with a filibuster. Democrats controlled the Senate for more than a year between the November reform vote and January , when Republicans took control of the Senate.
So filibuster reform prevented Republicans from holding many judicial vacancies open until Trump could fill them. It also fundamentally altered who gets to be a federal judge. Democrats controlled the Senate for less than 14 months after filibuster reform. Yet nearly half of the former Supreme Court clerks Obama appointed to federal appellate judgeships were confirmed during this brief period — nearly as many as Obama appointed in the almost five years before filibuster reform.
One immediate impact of filibuster reform, in other words, is that it made it far easier for nominees with elite credentials to become federal judges. Both parties can tell stories of fallen martyrs, like George W. Both Estrada and Liu fell to filibusters. It also cleared the path for known ideologues to join the bench. And it appears to be altering how many sitting judges behave. As the election drew nigh, thenth Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch looked like he was openly campaigning for a promotion.
During this period, the Federalist Society grew increasingly obsessed with limiting the power of federal agencies to create binding regulations — an agenda that could hobble government bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency. Gorsuch signaled his loyalty to this anti-regulatory agenda by writing gratuitous opinions laying out new limits he hoped to impose on federal agencies.
In one case, Gorsuch even attached a separate concurring opinion to his own majority opinion. So they have every incentive to audition for the job that they want. After all, the best way to win the prize that Gorsuch captured for himself is to catch the eye of the Federalist Society and its adherents. While Trump has been very successful at filling the bench with brilliant Republican partisans, a Democratic president is unlikely to enjoy similar success.
Just look at the last two years of the Obama presidency if you want to know how a Republican Senate is likely to treat Democratic judicial nominees. Even if Democrats do overcome the odds to capture a majority, moreover, the balance of power is likely to be held by red-state Democrats who could be vulnerable to pressure from conservative interest groups hoping to keep Democratic nominees off the bench.
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