Senate Confirms Three Lifetime
Appointments
Circuit Vacancies Dip To
Single Digits
WASHINGTON (Tuesday, June 24,
2008) – Three judicial nominees, whose consideration was
expedited by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy
(D-Vt.), were confirmed by the Senate today for lifetime
appointments to the federal judiciary. The nominees include
Judge Helene White and Raymond Kethledge, whose confirmations
fill the final vacancies on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Steven Murphy was also confirmed for a seat in the eastern
district of Michigan.
The confirmations Tuesday bring to
52 the number of federal judges confirmed by the Senate in the
110th Congress. The nominations of Judge White and
Kethledge were the result of months of negotiations between
Michigan Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow and the White
House, and
resolve a decade-long impasse on the Sixth Circuit. The
three nominees confirmed Tuesday
received a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on
May 7, and were
ordered reported from the Committee on
June 12. Judge White, who was nominated for the Sixth
Circuit three times by President Clinton, but who never received
a hearing by the Republican-led Senate, responded to scores of
questions posed by Republican members of the Committee, which
led to a delay in the Committee’s consideration of the Michigan
nominees.
“The Michigan vacancies on the
Sixth Circuit have proven a great challenge,” said Leahy. “I
want to commend Senator Levin and Senator Stabenow for working
to end years of impasse. I have urged the President to work
with the Michigan Senators and, after seven years, he finally
has. We have come a long way since I became Chairman in 2001
when the Sixth Circuit was in turmoil and nominations had been
road blocked for years.”
Leahy said further, “The only
lifetime appointments in our government, these nominations
matter a great deal. The Federal judiciary is the one arm of our
government that should never be political or politicized,
regardless of who sits in the White House. I will continue in
this Congress, and with a new President in the next Congress, to
work with Senators from both sides of the aisle to ensure that
the Federal judiciary remains independent, and able to provide
justice to all Americans, without fear or favor.”
Circuit court vacancies are at the
lowest rate in over a decade. With Tuesday’s confirmation of
the Sixth Circuit nominees, eight of the 13 circuits are without
a single vacancy, and 11 have fewer vacancies than at the start
of the Bush administration. There are just nine circuit
vacancies across the country, and the circuit vacancy rate has
dropped from 17.9 percent at the start of the Bush
administration to just 5.1 percent after today’s confirmations.
Vacancies on the federal judiciary nation wide have dropped from
9.9 percent after President Clinton’s administration to just 4.8
percent today.
The Senate is poised to make
additional progress on Thursday when it will consider the
confirmations of two additional district court judges pending on
the Executive Calendar, G. Murray Snow of Arizona, and William
T. Lawrence for the Southern District of Indiana, who were both
reported by the Judiciary Committee in May. The Judiciary
Committee will also consider four district nominees from New
York at a
business meeting scheduled for Thursday.
For more information on judicial
nominations,
click here.
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