Democrats can confirm more judges by ending arcane rule
By Jonathan Bernstein / Bloomberg Opinion
President Biden and Senate Democrats were aggressive about nominating and confirming federal judges in the first two years of Biden’s term. But since January, their momentum has been slowed by Republican obstructionism. Democrats have the power to break the logjam; and they should use it.
The arcane Senate custom that enables this particular obstruction is something called the “blue slip.” For more than a century, a senator has been allowed to block judicial nominees from his or her own state by declining to sign off on them (on, yes, a blue slip of paper). At this point, many of the remaining vacancies are for district judges in states with Republican senators. (A blue slip used to be required for both district and appellate court judges, but Republicans ended the tradition for appeals courts in 2018, and now they are using them to block district court picks.) As HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery reports, Democrats turned in 110 blue slips during Donald Trump’s presidency, while so far in Biden’s, Republicans have submitted 17.
There currently are 62 district court vacancies and nine appellate vacancies on the federal bench. From a good-government perspective, this is harmful because those open positions inconvenience hundreds of thousands of Americans who have business before the federal courts. From a political perspective, it prevents the president from filling the judiciary with like-minded people, which is a legitimate goal of every administration.
Which gets to the blue-slip problem. Of the district court vacancies (almost 10 percent of all district court positions), 35 don’t even have a nominee. That’s mostly because Republican senators are refusing to accept anyone Biden might nominate
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-democrats-can-confirm-more-judges-by-ending-arcane-rule/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Why do the Democrats feel this need to abide by an unwritten rule?
