Senate Confirms Three Lifetime Appointments To Federal Bench

 

WASHINGTON (Tuesday, June 10, 2008) – The Senate today confirmed three nominees for lifetime appointments to the Federal bench, moving another step forward in reducing judicial vacancies to the lowest levels in decades.   

 

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) worked to advance Senate votes on the confirmation of three district court nominations for which the Committee held a confirmation hearing in April.  The confirmations Tuesday of Mark Davis for the Eastern District of Virginia, Stephen Limbaugh for the Eastern District of Missouri, and David Gregory Kays for the Western District of Missouri furthers the progress the Senate has made during this Congress to confirm President Bush’s judicial nominations and reduce judicial vacancies across the country.  There are just 44 judicial vacancies today, and the vacancy rate is just five percent, almost half what it was at the end of the Clinton administration.

 

“I congratulate the nominees and their families on their confirmations today, and I look forward to making further progress by working together on judicial nominations,” said Leahy.

 

Two additional district court nominees are pending on the Senate’s Executive Calendar.  The Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on three nominations during a business meeting on June 12, including nominees to fill the final two vacancies on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The nominations to be considered Thursday are part of an agreement reached between the White House and Michigan Senators Carl Levin (D) and Debbie Stabenow (D) to fill the long vacant Michigan seats on the Sixth Circuit, as well as a seat in the Eastern District of Michigan.  The Committee will also hold a hearing June 11 for nominees to four district court vacancies in New York.

 

Vacancies on the Federal bench rose to over 100 when President Bush took office in 2001, including 32 circuit court vacancies.  Democrats have reduced vacancies by almost two-thirds, and vacancies on the circuit appellate courts are at the lowest levels since 1996.  The Senate has confirmed 49 judicial nominations in this Congress, and 32 nominations for high-ranking positions in the Department of Justice, including the Department’s top three positions – the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney Genera and the Associate Attorney General.

 

Leahy’s statement on the Senate’s confirmation votes today follows.  Watch the June 11 hearing on pending nominations, as well as the June 12 Committee debate on pending nominations, live online.

 

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For more information about judicial nominations, including current judicial vacancies, click here.

 

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Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)

Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee

On Judicial Nominations

June 10, 2008

 

Today the Senate will confirm three more nominations for lifetime appointments to the Federal bench.

 

The first nomination we consider is that of Mark Davis of Virginia to fill a vacancy in the Eastern District of Virginia, and I commend the Virginia Senators on this nomination.  After years of controversial nominations, Senators Warner and Webb have worked successfully with the White House on a series of recent nominations for district and circuit court seats, including that of Judge G. Steven Agee of Virginia, who was confirmed to a seat on the Fourth Circuit last month.

 

I was pleased to accommodate Senator Bond’s request that we proceed promptly in Committee to consider the nominations of David Kays and Stephen Limbaugh to vacancies in the Western and Eastern Districts of Missouri.  Both nominees have the support of Senator McCaskill.  I wish Justice Ronnie White, who went on to become Missouri’s first African-American Chief Justice, had received similar consideration when President Clinton nominated him to the Eastern District of Missouri.  Instead, more than two years after he was nominated, and two and a half months after he was reported out of the Judiciary Committee for a second time, his nomination was voted down on a party line vote, not a single Republican Senator voting to confirm him.  So today, in contrast to the treatment of President Clinton’s nominees, we proceed to consider these two nominations.

 

I noted last week the sudden concern of the Minority Leader for district court nominations.  Perhaps he did not have a chance to see my statement from earlier in the week in which I noted that with Republican cooperation, we have the opportunity this work period confirm five nominees already reported favorably by the Judiciary Committee?   Of course, today we would have more than those five nominations on the Senate’s Executive Calendar had Republicans not stalled this President’s nominations of Judge Helene White and Ray Kethledge to the Sixth Circuit, and the nomination of Stephen Murphy to the Eastern District of Michigan.  As I said last week, with cooperation from across the aisle, the Senate is poised to have confirmed four circuit court judges and 11 district court judges before the July 4 recess, confirming a total of 15 lifetime appointments.

 

I recall Senator Specter’s frustration when he was Chairman with a Republican Majority at the end of the last Congress, and Republican holds prevented the confirmation of 14 district court nominations.  Democrats on the Judiciary Committee had worked hard to expedite the nominations at the end of the last Congress.  Many of them were for vacancies deemed judicial emergencies, including three in one Federal district in Michigan where several judges of senior status—one over 90 years old—continued to carry heavy caseloads to ensure that justice was administered in that district.   Now, after the successful efforts of the Senators from Michigan in conjunction with the White House, I hope Republicans will not object to filling three more judicial emergency vacancies in Michigan.

 

In contrast to the Republican Senate majority that used the Clinton years to more than double circuit court vacancies around the country, the Senate has already reduced circuit court vacancies by almost two-thirds.  We are poised to complete Senate consideration of the two Sixth Circuit nominations.  If the Republican minority allows that progress, yet another circuit will be without any vacancies.  In fact, we would reduce the total number of circuit court vacancies across the Nation to single digits for the first time in decades.

 

The Republican effort to create an issue over judicial confirmations is sorely misplaced.  Last month we experienced the greatest rise in unemployment in a single month in over two decades, bringing the total job losses for the first five consecutive months of this year to over 325,000.  Americans are now facing increasing burdens from the soaring price of gas, high food prices, rising unemployment and a home mortgage foreclosure and credit crisis.

 

So today we make progress, and the Senate is likely to confirm three additional lifetime appointments to the Federal bench.  I congratulate the nominees and their families on their confirmation today.

 

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