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Subscribe to RSSFrom msnbc.com's Tom Curry:
On some big issues, Barack Obama’s presidency remains up in the air: for example, the fate of the health care overhaul awaits a Supreme Court decision, probably next year.
But Obama’s judicial appointments will make an imprint that will endure long after he leaves the White House.
In addition to his two Supreme Court picks, the Senate has confirmed 18 of Obama’s appeals court nominees. That compares with 23 of George W. Bush’s appeals court nominees confirmed at the same point in his first term as president.
“There’s been a definite improvement; it was somewhat slow start for the administration in focusing on judicial nominations. That’s clearly attributable to the very heavy legislative load they had in the first couple of years,” said Caroline Frederickson, the head of the American Constitution Society, a progressive advocacy group.
“The president has been reasonably successful in confirming circuit court (appeals court) nominees and is on par with his predecessors,” said Nan Aron, head of the Alliance for Justice, a liberal advocacy group. “He’s lagging significantly in the district (trial) courts, though, leaving gaping holes in the judiciary and hampering the ability of Americans to receive justice.”
Obama’s most controversial appeals court nominee, Goodwin Liu, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, faces a vote on his nomination Thursday.
Sixty votes are needed to end debate on the Liu nomination and bring it to a final vote.
Republican senators – some of whom fought hard against Democratic filibusters of Bush’s judicial nominees six years ago – will decide whether to block a vote on Liu.
Two weeks ago, the Senate by a vote of 63 to 33 decided to end debate and move to the confirmation of John McConnell, an Obama nominee for a lower federal court vacancy in Rhode Island, despite vehement opposition from business groups.
The 11 Republican senators who voted to end a filibuster of McConnell may be a clue to the vote Thursday on Liu. “I was hoping it reflected the fact that they had reverted to the principles they stated during the Bush administration: that nominees deserve up or down votes, and that ‘elections have consequences’ and that ‘advise and consent’ is not ‘advise and obstruct.’ We’ll have to see whether or not that will be true with the vote on Goodwin (Liu),” said Frederickson, a Liu ally.
Liu formerly served on the American Constitution Society board.
Worth watching Thursday will be four GOP senators who signed a bipartisan accord in 2005 to not use filibusters to block votes on judicial nominees except in undefined “extraordinary circumstances.” The four are: Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine.
Graham said in a statement Thursday he'd vote to sustain the filibuster of Liu. He cited Liu's 2006 Senate testimony against Samuel Alito, whom Bush had nominated for the Supreme Court. In his testimony Liu said, "Judge Alito's record envisions an America where police may shoot and kill an unarmed boy to stop him from running away with a stolen purse. ... This is not the America we know."
Liu told senators last year that he regretted that testimony because it was "unduly harsh" and "hurtful to the nominee."
But that apology wasn’t enough for Graham, who said Thursday, "His outrageous attack on Judge Alito convinced me that Goodwin Liu is an ideologue. His statement showed he has nothing but disdain for those who disagree with him. ... This episode -- along with his out of the mainstream writings -- requires me to take the extraordinary step of voting no on cloture."
In one way this battle resembles the Miguel Estrada filibuster battle of 2003-2004. Estrada was a brilliant young lawyer whom Democrat blocked after Bush tried to put him on the appeals court for the District of Columbia circuit. Some saw Estrada as a Supreme Court justice in the making.
Now some court watchers see Liu as a potential high court nominee, looking ahead to possible retirements for Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 78, Antonin Scalia, 75, and Anthony Kennedy, who turns 75 in July.
As for the effect of the Obama appeals court judges who has been confirmed so far, Aron said, “It’s way too early to make definitive statements about the impact of Obama nominees, but we can get a hint from the health care cases being heard, for instance, in the 4th Circuit, where the Obama-nominated judges seemed to approach the arguments differently from the Republican appointees.”
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In addition to the administration's lagging in appointments to the trial courts, there is the issue of the Senate stonewalling many of the appointments. Our district has just confirmed two judges to the Federal bench that had been originally proffered in 2010. The Senate failed to act on their appointments and the President had to renominate them in January 2011. Thereafter, the judges were confirmed. It is not only the President that has to take heat on this, the Senate must also.
lets hope the supreme court gets 5 new judges appointed by Obama .. its time to take America back from the corporate interests ...
Agreed timewonttell; his first 2 picks were excellent.
His first 2 picks were LAME and VERY un-qualified, as well as being activist!
America is obviously a Center-Right country. So to give obama "5" more picks as ignorantly stated above would be devastating relative to representation.
How do you know the first 2 picks were excellent, they haven't really ruled on anything controversial yet.
Ah David, you're just ticked off that they aren't activivist YOUR way.
David - Representation? On the Supreme Court? Uh, you do understand the difference between the judicial and the legislative branches of government don't you? I suggest you read that little document called the Constitution.
educated thinker, you need to shake that hyper-partisan gotcha tunnel vision. a judicial branch such as the SC is representative based on their ideology that they based their opinions and decisions on.
IT'S THAT SIMPLE, but you THOUGHT you could hack away, huh?
And all this time I thought they were supposed to base their decisions on law and constitutionality of the subject. But, you are right david, the right leaning members of this court definitely make decision based on ideology.
Conservative appointees have presented a major obstacle to "government by the people, for the people." Corporations are NOT people. The conservative judges on the SCOTUS have become glorified Gapetos, magically animating corporations into "real boys."
david - So you agree that the composition of the SCOTUS should not be exclusively white male or right wing. Did you support the nominations of Justices Sotomayer and Kagan? Somehow I doubt it.
I put blame on the Democrats too for this filibuster s**t. They had a chance to change senate rules back in '09, and again this year, but both times they missed out on their chance.
Its all politics. Dems wanna be able filibuster when they are in the minority. Neither side really wants the filibuster to go away, which is why the senate is becoming more and more irrelevant.
They didn’t miss out on their chance. It had to be done
on day 1 of the new congressional session. And if you remember at the end of
that day they went home for 2 weeks (as usual) but Harry did not recess the Senate
so for the next 2 weeks it appeared to be 1 long day. When they got back the
Republicans used an obscure rule that requires a two-thirds majority to change
the rules on day one of any session.
As for 2009 they had no idea that the filibuster would be
used 3 times as often as any previous 2 year session.
They were busy passing the budget, oh sh** they forgot to do that too when we had total control.
Dennis
Remember Reconcilliation? Or the 3 republicans,Snowe,Collins and Sdector? Filibuster busted. Thats how the Healthcare bill was passed remember?
Wondering what the litmus test questions the Congressman and Senators will ask to determine qualifications. Abortion and healthcare for sure. If they base their decision on the litmus questions no one will satisfy the far right and Tea Party. Some judicial position may not be filled until after the 2012 elections. That means an overworked and understaffed judiciary will need to work even harder to keep up.
obama is failing in just about everything
BINGO!
Indeed. He has failed to be the disaster that was his predecessor, and he has failed to be virtually everything the right wing has accused him of being. Thank goodness!
Educated? Thinker? Definitely not together.
Obama has failed in creating jobs.
Obama has failed in ending the Recession.
Obama has failed in uniting the Country.
Obama has failed in Foreign Policy.
Obama has failed in---Well you get the idea.
HE IS A FAILURE.
He's created more jobs than his predecessor. He hasn't ended the recssession because Repuplicans have blocked any more stimulus spending - and we need more, because we fell that far under Bush.
Other than that, the facts are with you. He's contrinued the Bush policies that have helped bring the economy to it's current crisis, and expanded Bush's policies on on torture, survielance and most worrisome "indefinite detention."
Instead of "transparency," he makes Nixon look like relatively open guy when it comes to classified information, though to be fair, he's using Bush's methods.
He's thrown a bone or two to the left on stuff that doesn't matter structurally - some stuff on gay rights (though he talks out both side of his mouth) and the health care debacle, which may have established a right to health care at the price of the largest giveaway to health insurance companies in the history of the world.
In short he's been moderate right Republican in an era when we have been pulled so far right that Eisenhaur would be considered a Marxist (by people who wouldn't know one if they crawled up their backside) and the idea that we should let people starve is the epitome of "right thinking."
He's given you people 90% of what you want, but like the schoolyard bullies you emulate, you whine he manages to hold on to some of his lunch money.
slodon's first comment at 4.3 says all you need to know about his perspective. Perhaps that explains his moniker.
cool! i didn't know parrots could type!
Of two picks one has never tried a case much less presided over a trial. Remember the outrage when Bush tried that BS?
The other is a blatant racist as evidenced by her fire department ruling which was overturned.
What you say does not mean they do not know the constitution or the heart and sole of the law. Many researchers know the law better than the litigators, who do you think the litigators get their law research from. You people don't stop to think what the hell you're talking about.
Of two picks one has never tried a case much less presided over a trial. Remember the outrage when Bush tried that BS?
The other is a blatant racist as evidenced by her fire department ruling which was overturned.
Deja vu.
Deja vu
"fat guy in a little suit" what movie does this quote come from?
Judges should be seated according to their knowledge of the Constitution and the law, not for their leanings toward any political party. In answer to the headlines' question: He's scaring me.
That's not realistic.
I hope the president picks the most liberal left wing nuts to offset the right wing nuts that bush appointed. Also, the appointments need to offset the extreme move to the right that has been taking place in this country. We are rapidly approaching a situation similar to Germany with the Nationals socialists!
Why don't they just skip over this, may we will have enough money to hire some in the distant future. Heck we don't need any more decisions may in by obama on anything nor bushes crowd either. Send all the usless government people home permanently. We could let Gadaffi may some decisions for, at less he had money in the bank. He was not in debt. Believe it or not their are some countries in this world who are not in debt and have several years of reserve.
Yes it's amazing how efficient dictatorships are. Let's try that to reduce the debt.
So far the President has picked very good judges, and it will be interesting to see how they perform. It is too early to gauge how well these new judges will do on the high court. Prrogressive Power will be watching how these judges perform, and their decisions will be debated on many levels.