"One Year: Where Are the Judges?"

The title of this post is the headline of this little piece by Jeffrey Toobin that's part of a New Yorker review of President Obama's first year. Here are snippets:

It’s an understatement to say that President Obama has had a busy agenda in his first year in office, so it may sound churlish to complain about something he hasn’t done.  But to me the most surprising aspect of Obama’s first year has been his failure to take full advantage of one the great opportunities available to any President: the chance to nominate federal judges.

When Obama took office, there were more than a hundred vacancies on the federal appeals and district courts. One year into his tenure, Obama has made only thirty-one appointments to those courts, and just twelve have been confirmed.  In George W. Bush’s first year, with a similar number of vacancies, he made sixty-four nominations.  White House officials assert that ten new district court nominations are imminent, but the overall pace remains astonishingly slow. I wrote about this aspect of Obama’s Presidency last September, and the trend has continued....

Republicans have stalled on many nominations, fought others, and mostly done their best to slow down the pace.  What’s perplexing is that Obama himself has not filled the pipeline with nominations; if he did, Republicans might feel some pressure to move the process along.  Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has held prompt hearings for all of Obama’s nominees, but he can’t hold hearings on nominations that haven’t yet been made.

Obama himself is currently going through a rough patch in his presidency, and his influence on Capitol Hill is waning.  An assertive Republican minority will probably only feel emboldened to engage in ever more obstructionist tactics.  A thin slate of judicial nominees only makes the Republicans’ task easier.

Some related new and old posts:

• The growing (and justified) complaints about Obama's approach to judicial nominations
• Should President Obama be praised or assailed for his approach to judicial nominations so far?
• Seeking thoughts on a "professional judiciary" for sentencing law
• Judge Gerard Lynch becomes first lower-court Obama nominee confirmed by Senate
• "Obama moving slowly on judges"
• Should President Obama practice ageism when making judicial nominations?
• Noticing the biggest bias in the federal judiciary
• How a new administration is likely to impact federal sentencing practice
• Why federal sentencing reformers must focus on the USSC and lower courts
• Judging, politics, sentencing and elections
• A modest(?) proposal for filling the bench from the ivory tower
• Urging President-elect Obama to elevate district judges to the circuit courts
• A partially justified(?) celebration of "Diversity on the federal bench"