The truth about Bush’s judicial nominees.
Now that the Republicans are taking over the Senate, let’s review the oft-repeated Republican charge that the Senate Judiciary Committee was blocking President Bush’s nominations to the federal bench. For example, writing in the Wall Street Journal this October last, John Fund repeated the gross misrepresentation that “[I]t’s on judges that the monkey-wrench [sic] Senate attitude is most obvious. Nearly 40 of President Bush’s nominees to the bench haven’t gotten a hearing, including several who were nominated 17 months ago.” (*) The numbers have changed somewhat in the intervening month, but Fund is still guilty of fuzzy statistics. Fortunately for the truth, the Committee has been maintaining a web page with the actual statistics on the number of judicial nominations acted on. There’s no telling whether that page will continue to exist in the new regime, though the new Chairman, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, is definitely a fair-minded man. Today, the page lists the following statistics, edited for brevity:
Nominations Statistics
November 21, 2002
Active Article III Federal Judges: 802
Confirmations since July 10, 2001: 100
Nominees Pending a Senate Vote: 0
Nominees Given Committee Hearings: 103
Nominees Voted On by Committee: 102
Nominees Pending a Committee Vote: 1
Nominees with Complete Paperwork to be Reviewed and Scheduled: 11
Judicial Nominations Received: 131
Nominations without Home-State Consent: 13
Nominations Without ABA Peer Reviews: 6
Vacancies on July 10, 2001: 110
New Vacancies since that date: 50
Current Vacancies: 60
Judicial Vacancies without Nominations: 29
Judicial Emergency Vacancies without Nomination: 7
(†) Do the math. Of the 103 nominees given a hearing, 100 were confirmed. One has a committee vote pending. Two others were not confirmed, meaning their nominations were voted down. Admittedly, had Dennis Shedd’s nomination been voted down (‡), that number would have increased to a not-so-whopping three. The supposedly obstructionist Senate in reality blocked a grand total of two of Bush’s nominations. Note further that there are 29 judicial vacancies for which President Bush has nominated no one. The real obstructionist would be in the White House.
The truth about Bush’s nominees is that most of them have sailed through. So what were those Republicans complaining about? Could it all have been just a political game?