WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden has two seats on the influential court of appeal in the nation’s capital that regularly takes judges to the Supreme Court.
They are among the roughly 10% of federal judges who are or will be open, giving Biden his first chance to make his mark in the U.S. judiciary.
Barring an unlikely expansion of the Supreme CourtWill Biden soon be unable to do anything about the entrenched conservative majority of the Supreme Court. Judge Clarence Thomas is the oldest of the court’s conservatives at the age of 72, and former President Donald Trump’s three appointees, ranging in ages from 49 to 56, are expected to sit on the bench for decades to come.
Democrats traditionally haven’t paid attention to the judiciary, but that changes after four years of Trump and the massive changes he madeBiden’s appointments are also the only concrete steps he has at this point to influence the judiciary in general, although there has been an increase in the number of judges in lower courts.
The nearly 90 seats that Biden can fill, which give their occupants life sentences after confirmation by the Senate, are fewer than the former Trump inherited four years ago. That’s because Republicans who controlled the Senate confirmed relatively few judges in the last two years of Obama’s White House.
Included in the census are 10 seats in federal appeals courts where almost all appeals, except for the few dozen that are decided each year by the Supreme Court, expire.
One seat is held by Merrick Garland, whose confirmation as attorney general is expected in the coming days. Another longtime judge in court, David Tatel, has said he is cutting back on his duties, a change that will allow Biden to appoint his successor.
Chief Justice John Roberts, Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Thomas served as justices on appeal at the courthouse at the base of Capitol Hill before joining the Supreme Court atop the hill.
The late Judges Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were also members of the court of appeal, where they first formed their lasting friendship.
After Scalia’s death just over five years ago. President Barack Obama nominated Garland to the Supreme Court, but Senate Republicans didn’t even give him a hearing, let alone a vote.
When Trump took office in January 2017, he had to fill a vacancy in the Supreme Court. Trump eventually made three Supreme Court appointments to go along with 54 court selections from the court and 174 justices, aided by then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to, as he put it, “leave no vacancy.”
Democrats and their progressive allies say they have learned a few lessons from the Republicans, and plan to give court nominations more attention than in previous Democratic administrations.
“It’s an exceptional situation where you have a president and the people around him are people who really see this as a high priority,” said former Senator Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who served with Biden in the Senate for 16 years. Feingold is now president of the American Constitution Society.
“I think President Biden knows that some of his legacy will undo as much as possible the damage Trump has done,” said Feingold.
Until now, liberal groups have been encouraged by the signals from the White House. White House counsel Dana Remus wrote to senators in December that recommendations for new judges should come within 45 days of a vacancy.
Biden has already promised to name a black woman in the Supreme Court if a seat becomes available. Judge Stephen Breyer, 82, is the oldest member of the court and could be retiring, but he has not announced any plans.
Democrats are looking for different kinds of diversity, following the Trump years when more than 75 percent of court nominees were male and 85 percent white.
In addition to race and gender, liberal groups are pushing for diversity of experience so that public defenders and public interest attorneys are taken into account, along with major attorneys and prosecutors who have prevailed in recent governments.
“We believe we would like them to prioritize experiential diversity, which would be new and different from the two previous democratic governments,” said Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice, referring to Obama’s presidents. and Clinton.
So far, the judges who have announced their retirement or move to a higher status, the term for a reduced workload, have mainly been appointees of Democratic presidents. Some seem to have delayed retirement until Trump left the White House.
Another four dozen are eligible for senior status or will be before Biden’s term ends in 2025. Such jurors must be at least 65 years old and 15 years of bench service.
But the Democrats are also seeing a major expansion of the judiciary for the first time in 30 years. The establishment of new judges to deal with the increased caseloads in parts of the country could receive bipartisan support, although it could provide a windfall of judicial appointments for Biden in the short term.
Idaho Republican Senator Mike Crapo recently wrote about the need for another federal judge for his state, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., Supports the addition of judges in California and other states.
“There is widespread agreement on the podium here on both sides,” Issa said last month during a hearing by a House Judiciary subcommittee on the extension of the court.
But some Republicans and conservative groups are wary of what Democrats might try to do now that they control Congress and the White House. If Democrats conclude “that the courts are somehow wrong and create judges to fill them up to skew the courts, I don’t agree,” said John Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation, who helped put it together. of a list of possible candidate supreme court Trump.
At the same hearing, Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, that the Democrats controlled the House in the last two years of Trump’s tenure, but held no hearings or proposed expansion legislation. “I ask myself why?” he asked.