Liam Conner
Washington – The Senate is expected to confirm President Biden’s 200th judicial nomination on Wednesday, surpassing the number of appointments to the federal judiciary made by his two most recent predecessors at this point in their presidencies.
The Senate will mark the milestone with the approval of Krissa Lanham on Tuesday and the confirmation vote on Angela Martinez on Wednesday for federal district court seats in Arizona. With the confirmations of nominees to the federal bench, Biden will have placed 42 judges on the US courts of appeals, 155 judges on the US district courts and two on the Court of International Trade. He also nominated Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court in 2022, a appointment that makes history by becoming the first black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court.
There are currently 43 vacancies open in the federal judiciary and another 28 vacancies in the future, according to US courts. Biden has two dozen nominees pending. The country has more than 860 authorized magistrates.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the confirmations a “major milestone,” saying on the Senate floor Monday in preparation for the votes that “it’s a number — 200 — that we can all be proud of and it shows how intensely focused we are on filling the bench with jurists who will strengthen our democracy and defend the rule of law.”
Images by Shawn Thew/Getty
Biden’s judicial nominations have slightly surpassed former President Donald Trump’s at this point in his fourth year in office. But surpassing the 234 judges Trump appointed to the federal bench during his first and only term could be difficult given the Senate’s calendar in the run-up to the November elections, as several Democratic senators in states won by Trump in 2020 they are working to hold on. to their seats and will likely spend the next few months campaigning.
“I think it’s pretty substantial when you consider what we’ve been up against,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin told CBS News of the milestone, noting the composition of the closely divided Senate and the Democratic one-vote advantage in the Judiciary. of the Senate. Committee, which considers the president’s nominations. The Senate is made up of 48 Democrats, 49 Republicans and three independents who normally vote with the Democrats. A simple majority, 51 votes, is required to confirm a judicial nominee.
While Durbin applauded the Senate’s work in confirming Biden’s judicial nominees, he explained why it would be difficult to match or surpass the number confirmed during the Trump administration.
“It’s difficult because Trump had a freakout at the end when they gave him a package. I think there were a dozen judges in that pack, maybe more,” Durbin added. “If we can get that kind of treatment from Senator McConnell, I think we can achieve it.”
Focus on judicial nominees increased under Trump as he sought reshape the federal judiciary, and his appointments to the Supreme Court may be the most lasting and consequential actions of his presidency. Trump nominated three justices to the nation’s highest court, expanding his conservative majority to 6-3. Since the end of its administration, in January 2021, the Federal Supreme Court overturned Roe v. It is ended affirmative action in higher educationand is ready to issue decisions reducing federal regulatory power in the coming weeks.
Biden has emphasized diversity in his judicial nominees, including in professional origins of those the president chose to serve.
The White House has stressed when advertising new rounds of judicial nominees chosen by the president fulfill his “promise to ensure that the nation’s courts reflect the diversity that is one of our greatest assets as a country – both in terms of personal and professional backgrounds.”
In his first six months in office, Biden matched the number of Obama appointees to federal appeals courts who worked as public defenders. Furthermore, among the president’s confirmed judges, more than 60% are women and more than 60% are people of color, according to the White House.
The president also named first American Muslim U.S. history federal judge Zahid Quraishi to the New Jersey federal district court.
