WASHINGTON — The vacancy rate on the federal bench is at its lowest point in 13 years, because of a recent surge of judges nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate.
The intense partisan battle over a handful of judges aside, Bush has already won approval of 168 judges, more than President Reagan achieved in his first term in the White House. And with 68 of his nominees winning confirmation in 2003 as of Wednesday, President Bush has had a better record this year than President Clinton achieved in seven of his eight years in office.
Experts who track federal judgeships say Republican complaints about a Democratic filibuster of four judges have obscured the larger picture.
"The Bush administration has been spectacularly successful in getting the overwhelming proportion of its judicial nominations confirmed," said political scientist Sheldon Goldman at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "There are only a relative handful being filibustered and held up. And this contrasts with the dozens of Clinton nominees who were held up by the Republicans in the last six years of the Clinton administration. The truth is the Republicans have had an outstanding record so far."
The Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee lists 39 vacancies among the 859 seats on the U.S. district courts and the U.S. courts of appeal -- a 4.5% vacancy rate.
This is the fewest number of vacancies since 1990. During Clinton's term in office, the number of vacancies on the federal bench was never fewer than 50, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
Today, the Senate committee is set to vote on four more judicial nominees, including California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown. She is likely to be opposed by almost all of the panel's Democrats, one of whom called her a "right-wing judicial activist" during a hearing two weeks ago.
If confirmed by the full Senate, Brown would fill a seat on the U.S. Court Of Appeals in the District of Columbia that is vacant in part because Republicans blocked two candidates that Clinton nominated in 1999.
Washington lawyer Allen Snyder, a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, had a hearing in the committee, but despite a lack of opposition, he failed to gain a confirmation vote in the Senate. White House lawyer Elena Kagan was denied even a hearing in the GOP-controlled Judiciary Committee. She has since become dean of Harvard Law School.
