The coming week in judicial nominations

To my chagrin, after writing last Sunday's update I apparently clicked "save as draft" instead of "publish" so the post never appeared in public.  No one emailed to complain, so perhaps no one cares about updates, whether weekly or daily.  (The league standings page is still getting several hundred hits a day, though.)  Based on this accidentally-collected data, I may forego any updating on the main site from this point forward and only update the standings page.

Putting that decision off for another day, the still-relevant portions of last Sunday's post are that (1) the Senate did indeed vote on January 25 to confirm Professor Rosanna Malouf Peterson to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Washington, (2) the Judiciary Committee did indeed vote on January 28 to report to the floor the nominations of state Judges Albert Diaz and James A Wynn Jr. to be United States Circuit Judges for the Fourth Circuit, and (3) the committee also voted on February 4 to report the reprised (if not repristinated) nominations of Edward Milton Chen and Louis B. Butler Jr. to be United States District Judges for the Northern District of California and Western District of Wisconsin, respectively.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, President Obama nominated four new judges on February 4:  Elizabeth Erny Foote and Marc Thomas Treadwell to be United States District Judges for the Western District of Louisiana and Middle District of Georgia, respectively, and state Judges Mark A. Goldsmith and Josephine Staton Tucker to be United States District Judges for the Eastern District of Michigan and Central District of California, respectively.

In the coming week, despite Friday morning's report in The Hill that Senator Richard Shelby has placed a blanket hold on all nominations on the Executive Calendar over a dispute concerning unfulfilled earmarks for his home state, the Senate will vote at 5:00 Monday evening on the nomination of United States District Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. to be United States Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit.  (The unanimous consent agreement enabling the vote was adopted last Thursday, the same day Shelby reportedly filed his hold.)  In addition, the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on one or more nominees on Wednesday afternoon at 4:00 and an executive business meeting to report up to four nominations Thursday morning at 10:00.

Shelby's hold obviously puts the Republican conference in a difficult position regarding its public opposition to the exploding federal budget deficit in general and to earmarks in particular--and complicates fellow Alabaman Senator Jeff Sessions's attempts as ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee to blame the Democratic leadership for the Senate's failure to confirm uncontested judicial nominees.  It may be interesting to see how long Shelby's hold lasts, with respect at least to the uncontroversial nominees, before Republicans begin to defect.  Sessions's comments before Monday's vote on the Greenaway nomination may be telling.

(As a procedural footnote, it may be of interest to readers that the precedents of the Senate regard senatorial courtesy and personal objections to be an informal practice implicated only when the nominee would fill a federal office within the objecting senator's home state.  Moreover, there is no mechanism by which to enforce the practice through the formal rules of the Senate.  Floyd M. Riddick and Alan S. Frumin, Riddick's Senate Procedure: Precedents and Practices, Nominations 951-52 (1992), available at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/riddick/938-953.pdf.  Presumably, the Senate could still act on nominations without the widely-reported 60-vote threshold if the Democratic leadership simply ignored the unwritten practice (though most backbench senators, regardless of party, would probably unite to protect this prerogative, and ignoring it would certainly provoke retaliation and set a precedent for the day Republicans retake control), though certain convenience and expediting measures (like taking nominations out of the order in which they're printed on the calendar) would remain subject to objections to the enabling unanimous consent requests.)

Comments

[J. Sarge]

Are you kidding? I check this site every day for the judicial news.

[Richmond Deputy]

Me, too. I check every day. I just figured you didn't have anything to say. Plus, not knowing where you are, I didn't know if the snow had affected you.

[Eric Todd Brammer]

Please keep updating this site. It performs a very needed service. I check this site every day, and I also check the Wikipedia "List of federal judges appointed by Barack Obama" page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_judicial_appointments) every day as well (along with the White House press page for releases on new judges). So, please do keep commenting. I'd like to know who the next federal judge who will be confirmed: Keenan (4th) or Stranch (6th)? And who will the next district judge be to be confirmed? Conley? (LA) Vitter lifted his hold. Also, you should mention names that have been published as being in the judicial nominee pipeline (Goodwin Liu for the 9th, Daniel Alter for a district judgeship in NY, Raymond Lohier for the 2nd, Robert Chatigny for the 2nd, etc.)......

Also, shouldn't we be getting some names voted out of committee later today? I think so: Freudenthal, Marshall, Pearson and Black (plus controversial DOJ nominee Dawn Johnsen).......

[The Jaded JD]

Everyone is welcome to check this site as often as you'd like, but I will be updating judicial nomination information no more frequently than once a week for the foreseeable future--barring notable events on the Supreme Court or Fourth Circuit.

Mr. Brammer, it sounds like you might have an addiction. I don't report on press reports unless they deal with the Fourth Circuit or the Eastern or Western Districts of Virginia. Howard Bashman does a fine job of aggregating those types of reports if you want broader coverage.