Here we go again. The two parties are battling over presidential judicial appointments needing Senate confirmation. Republicans recently filibustered another Obama nominee to the Federal Appeals Court for the District of Columbia, the third candidate to be blocked in the last several weeks.
The D. C. appeals court is felt to be the second most powerful court in the land below the Supreme Court in stature and the authority of its decisions. It is particularly important because it has oversight of many federal government agencies as well as deciding actions regarding federal rules and regulations. This court is also believed to be a training ground for the Supreme Court, with many of its justices later being appointed to the higher body. John Roberts was the most recent Supreme Court appointee to follow this path.
Currently, the D.C. appeals court has eight sitting justices, with four appointees by Democrats and four by Republicans, though for a number of years a four to three conservative majority ruled. President Obama has been trying to bring it up to its authorized strength of eleven justices for some time, with his appointments constantly blocked by Senate Republicans who label his choices as too liberal. Of course, the Republicans don’t want to change the composition of this important body, as its decisions would certainly lean more to the left with Obama’s appointments. But these appointments are a presidential prerogative and this is the way the composition of the Supreme Court and other federal courts change over the years.
It must be said that the Democrats in the Senate blocked a number of Bush’s nominees to federal appeals courts during his term in office, to the extent that Republicans were threatening to change the filibuster rule in regard to judicial appointments. Under this so-called “nuclear option,” the United_States_Courts_logolong-standing Senate rule on filibusters would have been ended and judicial appointments would have been made by a simple majority vote of the Senate. Now the Democrats are considering adopting the “nuclear option” to get Obama’s appointees to the courts approved, and the Republicans are warning of the possible consequences in the future if this is done.
Senate Republicans are claiming there is not enough work for the D.C. Circuit Court to justify the appointment of new justices, though during the Bush presidency the GOP did not consider this to be an issue. The Democrats are asserting gender is the blocking point for the Republicans, as two of the three Obama nominees are women. Over the last several years, Republicans have also blocked various minority candidates as well as women. Republicans have also called some of the candidates “extremists” because of their support for abortion rights and gun control, and the political leanings of the candidates is certainly the defining focus.
The divide on judicial appointments is not a recent development, with historical precedents going back as far as George Washington’s presidency, when George Rudledge was rejected by the Senate for appointment as Chief Justice. Of course, Robert Bork’s appointment to the Court by Ronald Reagan is what immediately comes to mind, but there were numerous rejections to the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals prior to that.
Whether the Democrats choose the “nuclear option” for judicial appointments and change the filibuster rules of the Senate remains to be seen. It certainly may come back to haunt them in later years. One of the considerations in the fights between the Republicans and Democrats over judicial nominees is that these are lifetime appointments who will be sitting on the bench for decades to come. If judicial appointments were changed to terms of ten, or even fifteen years, there would be less need for the two parties to fight to get their candidates in place, as change in the high courts would occur more frequently.
Resurrecting Democracy
www.robertlevinebooks.com
Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020