After the disastrous midterm elections, there was no legislative opportunity in the lame duck with more long-lasting implications for the issues we care about than confirming President Obama’s appointments to the federal judiciary. While the lame duck session is only two months long, federal judges are appointed for life. They rule for decades on progressive priorities like the environment, civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, corporate accountability, and gun control. The Supreme Court may stay under right-wing control for decades. But because it considers relatively few cases each year, federal judges can be a crucial firewall against the right-wing and corporate takeover of our democracy in thousands of others. Tuesday, the Senate confirmed 12 federal judges before going into recess. It brings this year’s total number of federal judicial appointments to 89 — more than twice as many as the 43 judges who were confirmed last year. This would not have been possible without the activism of CREDO members. Almost 500,000 CREDO activists pushed hard for filibuster reform, putting grassroots muscle behind calls from progressive senators like Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Tom Udall of New Mexico who led the charge to reform the filibuster. While we didn’t stop Republican abuse of the filibuster when it came to legislation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid helped change the rules so that executive nominees and federal judges (though not Supreme Court justices) could be confirmed with a simple majority in an up-or-down vote. After Republicans won a majority in the Senate in the midterms, more than 122,000 CREDO Action members stepped up to ensure that Senate Democrats, especially Senators Reid and Leahy, knew how important it was to fill as many vacancies as possible before Mitch McConnell became majority leader in the Senate. Even with this late surge, several years of obstruction and delay means that we go into the new Republican Congress with 41 empty judicial positions which are unlikely to be filled. While Republican obstructionism is certainly to blame, responsibility also falls on Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy. Despite pressure from CREDO activists and others, Senator Leahy staunchly upheld the arcane Senate tradition of the “blue slips,” which blocks confirmation proceedings until both senators from the nominee’s home state approve of the nomination. Sen. Leahy’s insistence on extending this procedural courtesy to Republican senators effectively required President Obama to obtain pre-approval from obstructionist, right-wing Republican senators before he could nominate a federal judge in their home state. It had a definite impact on the number and quality of nominations we were able to move forward, and it’s how we got the nomination of anti-choice, anti-gay, pro-confederate flag Michael Boggs in Georgia as part of a cynical deal to move forward other more progressive nominees. Fortunately, it was a nomination we were able to work help defeat working with our allies at NARAL Pro-Choice America. The prospects of confirming more judges in President Obama’s last two years in office for the 41 vacancies on the federal courts, including 12 categorized as judicial emergencies, are pretty grim. In Mitch McConnell’s Republican-controlled Senate, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley will be the head of the Judiciary Committee. Grassley has been the chief obstructor on the committee for the last six years and there’s no doubt he’ll do everything he can to slow-walk nominees, and force the president into more terrible compromises (like the Boggs nomination) with home-state Republican senators. His fellow Republicans will use every trick in the book to block confirmation of President Obama’s nominees in the next two years, both to thwart President Obama’s priorities and to hold out hope that a Republican president could fill the vacancies in 2017. It’s important to acknowledge our success in getting 89 judges confirmed, and to celebrate the activism that helped make those successes possible. We also must recognize that there is much more work to do, with many judges who never received a confirmation vote and a Supreme Court hostile to everything we value. Thanks for everything you do, Heidi Hess, Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets © 2014 CREDO. All rights reserved.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 19:47:01 +0000
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