{"id":150360,"date":"2022-12-16T14:36:02","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T18:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=150360"},"modified":"2022-12-16T14:40:24","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T18:40:24","slug":"bidens-ideologic-takeover-of-judicial-appointments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=150360","title":{"rendered":"Biden’s Many Appointments of Liberal Judges Translates to a Terribly Woke Judiciary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biden\u2019s Ideologic Takeover of Judicial Appointments<\/h2>\n

Renee Parsons<\/p>\n

Even before Mike Lindell failed to find any Judge or Court in the country to hear his legal Complaint about election fraud of the 2020 election, a pervasive cynicism existed\u00a0 <\/span>that the nation\u2019s judicial branch could no longer be counted on for fairness and objectivity before over-reaching its authority with an arbitrary dismissal <\/span>based on \u201cstanding<\/i>\u201d or avoidance of an edgy political matter – all of which raises the question of how some Judges become Judges in the first place.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There is a general agreement that being a Judge is a desirable, mostly cushy job.\u00a0 <\/span>They pretty much make their own hours; set their own schedule and agenda and establish judicial decisions with very little oversight or accountability; the question of how a Judge survives a retention vote is a different standard that Federal Article III Judges never need fret about such archaic concerns.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (Ill) <\/i>described the Committee with glowing words on the Senate floor<\/span><\/a>\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>that \u201cThe confirmation of highly qualified judges is one of the great, shared successes of President Biden and Senate Democrats,\u201d<\/i> there is more here than Durbin\u2019s self congratulatory fable on behalf of an Administration that has few bragging rights, especially when it comes to the quality of some of its recent judicial confirmations. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

With twenty two<\/span><\/a> members, the Committee\u2019s jurisdiction<\/span><\/a> provides critical oversight of the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Department of Homeland Security as well as responsibility for \u201cadvise and consent\u201d on all Article III<\/span><\/a> judicial appointments.\u00a0 <\/span>Those Judgeships include the Supreme Court and a total of 870 Federal<\/span><\/a> Judges within the prestigious thirteen Appellate Courts which are one step away from the Supreme Court and with a domain of four \u2013 five state while the \u2018lower\u2019 ninety four District Courts\u00a0 <\/span>conduct trials related to Federal law. \u00a0 <\/span>All Article III Judges are lifetime appointments with a current annual salary of $223,000. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One week after Biden\u2019s inauguration in January 2021, there were 59 Article III<\/span><\/a> vacancies awaiting judicial appointment to Federal Courts.\u00a0 <\/span>With full understanding of the need to dominate judicial<\/span><\/a> nominations,<\/span> the Biden Administration began an unprecedented<\/span><\/a> hustle to nominate 142 nominees<\/span><\/a> to fill those Federal appointments.\u00a0 <\/span>By December 7, 2022, ninety-five Federal<\/span><\/a> judicial nominees had been approved by the Judiciary Committee and confirmed by the US Senate including twenty eight Circuit Court Judges and sixty eight District Court Judges.<\/span><\/p>\n

With its last confirmation<\/span><\/a> in the 117<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> Session of Congress, there are currently another eighty three pending vacancies<\/span><\/a> including thirty two nominees awaiting Senate approval, another six awaiting a Committee vote<\/span><\/a> and ten awaiting a Committee hearing.\u00a0 <\/span>Those confirmations include eighteen Federal Circuit Judges with fourteen women of color and fifty seven Federal District Court Judges with forty two women of color.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>About 74 percent of the president\u2019s confirmed<\/span><\/a> nominees are women and about 46 percent are women of color; outpacing Trump\u2019s confirmed<\/span><\/a> judicial appointments of eighty five at the same point in his administration.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

With a steady stream of administrative approvals, required hearings and giving each nominee its due consideration is a massive time-consuming task, one benefit for the Administration\u2019s high rate of nominees is the Committee\u2019s inability to conduct its legitimate oversight on the FBI, DOJ and DHS.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Each nominee requires three separate votes of the committee\u2019s approval process: initial committee approval of the nomination, followed by a cloture vote on the Senate floor and a final Senate floor vote on confirmation. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As Democrats vote in a solid block, Republicans frequently split their votes; even to the point of allowing a nominee with a noticeable lack of innate judicial aptitude to pass unscathed.\u00a0 <\/span>In the interests of dumbing down the American judiciary, a conundrum exists when Republicans provide Democrats the necessary votes to approve some of the more sketchy candidates who otherwise might be denied the luxury of a privileged lifetime career at government expense.\u00a0 <\/span>Clearly, these Courts (especially the Circuit Courts) are no place for a second-stringer or a less than top-of-the-class candidate who may not pass muster.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

While Biden\u2019s nominations have set a record for nominating women and racially diverse attorneys, there is no assurance that ethnic or cultural diversity is a prerequisite for judicial competence or excellence, that application of \u201cEqual Justice under the Law<\/i><\/span><\/a>\u201d will be achieved by diversity or that a Soros devotee had not slipped through the cracks.\u00a0 <\/span>Other considerations may arise such as <\/span>should a nominee who supports use of a clerkship or a formal \u2018recommendation\u2019 in lieu of passing the bar exam be fast-tracked to confirmation?\u00a0 <\/span>Should thin judicial credentials or an inability to explain unsettling legal questions or obvious partisan or ideological bias or membership in a political activist organization such as a labor union be overlooked in favor of diversity and confirmation. \u00a0 <\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The difference between a 63-31 confirmation or a 42-48 vote is critical whether that candidate will be perceived as having been overwhelmingly approved due to exemplary personal and professional qualities to assume a prestigious Court position or a relatively close vote indicative of barely eking out a confirmation indicative of a candidate who is only marginally qualified with less than impressive credentials. There appears to be little distinction among Senators between appointing a Circuit Court Judge with limited judicial experience or a District Court Judge\u2019s understanding of the Constitution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Is this the most productive way to create a new generation of Federal Judges? \u00a0 <\/span>These split votes are not aberrations; too frequently the \u2018norm\u2019, rather than an almost unanimity of belief that this candidate has the highest judicial standards, professional demeanor and expertise.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On one vote for a District Court Judge, the final Senate vote was 51-43 with five Republicans voting affirmatively; yet without those five Republican votes, that nominee would have been denied confirmation (46-48).\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Frequent committee votes are 13-9; with two Republicans voting affirmatively.\u00a0 <\/span>If those Republicans voted on the basis of what might be perceived as an appropriate judicial philosophy, that vote would be 11-11.\u00a0 <\/span>In other words, with a membership of twenty two, a straight-line partisan vote would always result in a 11 \u2013 11 tie. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Republican Senators who regularly vote to confirm with the Democrats on almost every nominee are Sens. Susan Collins<\/span><\/a> (Maine), Lisa Murkowski\u00a0 <\/span>(Alaska) and Mitt Romney<\/span><\/a> (Utah)\u00a0 <\/span>\u2013 none of whom serve on the Judiciary Committee.\u00a0 <\/span>Committee members who most regularly vote with the Democrats on judicial nominees include Sens. Lindsay Graham, Thom Tillis and John Cornyn and others which facilitates a sketchy nominee\u2019s path to confirmation. \u00a0 <\/span>Derailing a nomination which needed to be derailed rarely happens as enough minority Republicans are willing to vote with majority Democrats.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this day of partisan politics, there exists a real possibility that a Democratic-majority sponsored candidate will reflect the qualities and philosophy that meets the party\u2019s \u2018woke\u2019 prerequisite and overall political agenda or that person would not have been nominated – which raises the question whether those confirmed Judges will politically repay their confirmation while serving on The Bench.\u00a0 <\/span>Will they see it as their duty to remain loyal partisans willfully blind to Justice as an<\/span> ideological takeover of the judicial branch of government rears its ugly shadow.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Renee <\/b>Parsons\u00a0served on the once prestigious ACLU\u2019s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found at\u00a0reneedove3@yahoo.com<\/b><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biden\u2019s Ideologic Takeover of Judicial Appointments<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}