Judicial Nominations

Remarkably, Mitt Romney's key constitutional advisor wants to turn back the clock on Equal Protection jurisprudence by watering down the standards for reviewing sex-discriminatory laws.

Republicans have been engaged in relentless obstruction of Obama's judicial nominees at an unprecedented level. The 17 district court nominees at issue this week have been awaiting a final vote for a cumulative total of 3,628 days from the time they were proposed by the president until today.

The health care debate highlights the importance of appointing judges who place their duty to the Constitution over a partisan agenda. But it also crystallizes the agenda of opposition that has caused the Republican Party to go off the deep end.

The decision raised troubling questions about the fairness of the Postville convictions. Which brings me to Stephanie Rose, who just happens to be awaiting Senate confirmation of her appointment as a federal district judge by President Obama.

Please -- cut the hyperbole, senators, and get back to work.

The battle over Mr. Cordray's nomination is over. It is time for Senate Republicans to take up the business of the nation's courts and address the nearly 200 million Americans living in jurisdictions with courts unable to function as designed.

They are abusing their positions and throwing sand in the gears of the Senate to make it harder for ordinary Americans to get our day in court and to defend ourselves against the powerful. It's a deeply cynical strategy, and ultimately a deeply harmful one.

If an eminently qualified nominee like Caitlin Halligan cannot get an up-or-down vote in the Senate, how will any future nominee be seriously considered? And how will the nation get out of the judicial crisis we are facing?

Caitlin Halligan had been nominated to fill the 9th seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit -- which is now more than a quarter vacant -- and today's Republican filibuster is unwarranted and irresponsible.

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia took their constitutional law road show to Congress on Wednesday at the invitat...

August 31 was a good day for all those who care about justice, and an object lesson for the U.S. Senate. The California state Commission on Judicial A...

Robert Bork is, in some ways, the intellectual leader of the Tea Party's legal vision. And that's exactly why Mitt Romney chose him. Having Bork head up his legal team sends a message that Romney is a True Conservative.

While Congress is consumed with a bitter fight over the federal budget deficit, the federal judge deficit continues to fester. Today, there are 115 federal district and circuit court judgeships currently or soon-to-be vacant -- one out of seven.

WASHINGTON -- In an incredibly rare public appearance in February, White House counsel Bob Bauer warned that the political standoff over judicial nomi...

The Administration has nominated candidates for only 10 of 16 vacancies on the U.S. Courts of Appeals, and 38 candidates for 72 vacancies in the District Courts. Why not give the Vice President a bigger role?

If anyone needs proof of how destructively polarized national politics has become, one need only consider yesterday's vote in the Senate on President Obama's nomination of Goodwin Liu to serve on the United States Court of Appeals.

Despite the fact that Professor Goodwin Liu was nominated over a year ago to a seat designated a "judicial emergency" on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals a minority in the Senate has persisted in blocking his nomination -- until now.

This afternoon, over a year after he was first nominated by President Obama to the Ninth Circuit federal court of appeals, UC Berkley law professor Goodwin Liu will go before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his second confirmation hearing.

As a result of unprecedented Republican political gamesmanship, President Obama ends the first half of his first term with a smaller percentage of his nominees confirmed than any previous president.

With more than 100 vacancies on the federal courts, there will be serious consequences to the American justice system if Senate Republicans continue to deny up or down votes to waiting nominees.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent seven more of President Obama's judicial nominees to the full Senate for a final vote. They are joini...

Why is Kimberly Mueller still waiting for a vote? The answer is simple, and unacceptable. Throughout the Obama presidency, Senate Republicans have taken judicial obstructionism to an entirely new level.

Almost one in eight federal judgeships is vacant in the country and legal scholars warn that the increasingly politicized confirmation process threate...

The cynically partisan course of conduct of Senate Republicans on judgeship confirmations threatens the quality of American justice, and therefore, the rule of law itself.

The vacancies on the federal bench continue to grow, resulting in a judicial system that is already overburdened coming to a grinding halt. The nation's courtrooms must not be left hostage to partisan bickering.