Litigation

L.A. Times to Obama: Time to Depoliticize Judicial Appointments

By Deanna Dawson

The Los Angeles Times has offered recommendations to President Obama regarding ways to avoid partisan bickering over the appointment and confirmaton of  federal judges.  

With 60 federal judgeships currently vacant around the country — 20 of which are considered an “emergency” — avoiding deadlock in the Senate takes on increased importance.

In an editorial titled “Ending the Judge Wars,” the Times proposed that:

1) President Obama reinstate the longtime practice of inviting the American Bar Association to help screen potential judges, a practice abandoned under the Bush administration.

2) Obama ask senators in each state to establish local screening panels to evaluate and make recommendations on potential judicial appointees.

3) The president renominate Bush judicial nominees who have not been acted on by the Senate, when those judicial candidates are rated as “well-qualified” by the ABA, and have received bipartisan support.

The Times added:

“If President Obama wants to deliver on the bipartisanship he has promised, he might focus on a process that in recent years has produced the political equivalent of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. We’re talking about the selection of federal judges, which at least since the Clinton administration has been ensnarled in partisan politics. Obama can’t cut through those knots by himself, but he can help to minimize the possibility that filling judicial vacancies — which now number 60 — will be held hostage to squabbling in the Senate.”

See these previous Gavel Grab entries on judicial nominating commissions, as well as the ABA’s press release on its nominating commission plan for federal judges. Also, see the Los Angeles Times’ earlier editorial endorsing the commissions.

Full post as published by The Gavel on February 09, 2009 (boomark / email).