The Climate-Change Wars Begin This Summer (New York Magazine, 05/22/13)
Jonathan Chait: "Bush’s judges on the D.C. Circuit have inserted themselves even more heavily into the policy debate by striking down a slew of regulations in health care, pollution, labor, and other areas, turning the court into one of the right’s most potent weapons during the Obama era. Since President Obama took office, four vacancies have opened on the D.C. Circuit Court, and Obama has not managed to seat a single justice to fill any of the slots. Republicans have displayed a willingness to filibuster even mainstream nominees, like Caitlin Halligan, who recently withdrew ... The Republican line has been set out most enthusiastically by the comically mendacious Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has long recognized the primacy of the D.C. Circuit and fervently taken up whatever procedural stance is required to increase the court’s Republican tilt. ... The most recent Journal editorial is the most unbelievable of them all. Its primary contention is that the D.C. Circuit is filled with underworked slackers, thus rendering any additional nominees unnecessary. The Journal never mentioned this during the Bush years, when it was urgently demanding that Republican judges fill every last vacancy (“it's time for the remaining nominees to have the up-or-down floor votes they deserve”). But having suddenly discovered the plague of slothfulness on the D.C. Circuit, it has embraced the cause of shrinking the court as a first-order principle. In actual fact, the D.C. Circuit is actually so overloaded with cases — its heavy policy load makes its docket especially technically demanding — that it has leaned on a panel of retired judges to hear its overflow cases. ... The Republicans don’t have the votes to actually pass their plan to eliminate all vacancies. Its function is to serve as justification for filibustering any nominees at all, however moderate or well qualified, for the remaining three vacancies."

Party opinion usurps public opinion (Reuters, 05/21/13)
Bill Schneider: "Right now, Senate Democrats are preparing to launch “the nuclear option” to break the partisan gridlock in Congress. This would change Senate rules to allow presidential nominations be confirmed by majority vote. A radical concept ‑ majority rule! Democrats are enraged because Republicans are using the filibuster to block Obama’s nominations for Cabinet positions and federal judgeships."

WSJ Supports Dismantling Federal Court In Order To Block Obama Nominees (Media Matters for America, 05/20/13)
Sergio Munoz: "The Wall Street Journal is endorsing Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley's absurd claim that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit doesn't need to fill its judicial vacancies, a position the senator didn't take when he was helping confirm former President George W. Bush's right-wing judges. Despite the newspaper's own reporting on the rampant GOP obstructionism that has prevented President Obama from easing the judicial emergencies caused by vacancies in the federal courts, the editorial page of the WSJ continues to applaud Republican filibusters of the president's nominations....The editorial - like Grassley's plan - is extremely inaccurate"

Barnett: The real scandal: Political gridlock (News and Observer [NC] , 05/18/13)
Editorial page editor Ned Barnett: "The obstructionism has been relentless. Senate Republicans have used the threat of filibuster to hold up nominees for federal judgeships and key administration posts. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that 85 federal judgeships are vacant. That’s 10 percent of the judiciary not functioning at a time when caseloads show the need for adding even more judicial posts. Some nominees have been waiting nearly 700 days. Another gave up after waiting two and a half years."

Time for Some Nominations. A Lot of Nominations (A plain blog about politics, 05/17/13)
Jonathan Bernstein: "If Harry Reid is willing to spend serious floor time on nominations, he needs more nominees. Lots more nominees. In particular, he really needs those three DC Circuit Court selections ... in the last couple of weeks the White House really has been starting to roll out more judicial picks -- one circuit court selection and three district court selections yesterday, on top of a few last week. That's good! But there's a lot more to go."

Obama Says ‘Check’ to GOP in Confirmation Chess Match (Roll Call, 05/17/13)
David Hawkings column: "Srinivasan is about to become the first federal appeals judge of South Asian heritage and, at 46, the youngest judge on the D.C. Circuit. Of more consequence, he’ll be the first newcomer to that court in seven years. Since 2006, the number of vacant seats has grown to four. Of the seven full-timers on the bench, four were nominated by Republicans and three by Democrats, so Srinivasan will make it an even split. That simple math helps explain why all those seats have stayed vacant since long before the election — and why that situation is about to change, although only a little bit. ...a roster of three D.C. Circuit choices to be nominated in coming weeks as a slate — challenging the Senate, in effect, to embrace at least one of them because surely they can’t all be activist leftists. The Republicans know this is coming and have their counter-programming planned out: There’s no need to seat anyone else, they’ll insist, because the court’s caseload is not big enough to justify the eight judges on the job. The Srinivasan confirmation will shift the judicial wars into something more like a chess match."

Obama needs a fresh approach to naming judges (Politico, 05/15/13)
David Fontana: "Obama’s judicial nominees have waited three times longer on the floor of the Senate than did those of President George W. Bush. These issues are crucially important, to be sure. But all of this attention on delays in nominations and obstructions after nominations largely ignores what happens in the Senate before a nomination, when much of the groundwork is laid for determining whom the president can nominate and how the Senate will treat his nominees. Senators from the state where judicial openings arise play a large role in indicating to the president which potential nominees they would support. Sometimes these senators do not even get around to suggesting names to the president."

Why Just Fixing The Filibuster Is Not Enough To Unbreak The Senate (Think Progress, 05/14/13)
Ian Millhiser: "The Senate’s filibuster rules gave the minority party power to shut down all judicial confirmations for much of 2012, ... Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) unilaterally blocked Judge Elissa Cadish’s nomination to a federal judgeship last March by invoking a Judiciary Committee procedure that allows just one senator to block a judicial nominee so long as that nominee is from their home state. Heller objected to the fact that Cadish accurately described the state of Second Amendment law prior to a Supreme Court decision that made the law more favorable to the NRA’s views. So, while filibuster reform is essential in the wake of unprecedented obstruction of cabinet-level nominees and similar tactics, it is not sufficient in and of itself. The Senate’s rules and the rules governing its various committees are pervasively broken, and require a complete overhaul to prevent future obstruction."

11th Circuit (Southern District of Florida Blog, 05/07/13)
David Oscar Markus: “there are still two openings on the 11th Circuit and apparently no progress being made in moving those nominations forward.”

CRS Confirms Historic Obstruction of President Obama’s Judicial Nominees (Text & History, 05/06/13)
Judith E. Schaeffer: "In a report issued by the Congressional Research Service on May 2, 2013 analyzing and comparing the Senate fate of President Obama’s lower court nominees with those of all Presidents since Ronald Reagan (during their first terms), CRS confirmed what Constitutional Accountability Center has been saying for years – that Senate Republicans’ obstruction of President Obama’s judicial nominees during his first term has been unprecedented. In the past, partisan warfare over judicial nominees was confined to a relatively narrow category of nominees deemed controversial, while uncontroversial nominees voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee during prior Administrations could expect a quick confirmation on the Senate floor. That all changed with Senate Republicans’ treatment of President Obama’s nominees."

EDITORIAL: Another crack at the filibuster; If senators won't abolish it, they should at least fashion limits so the will of their constituents can be carried out (Los Angeles Times, 05/02/13)
"The U.S. Senate has not conducted any official business this week, so the American people have been at least temporarily protected from its stultifying refusal to represent them well. But the senators will eventually return — and will resume blocking judicial nominees ... the combination of a deepening partisan divide, Republican exploitation of the rules and weak Democratic leadership has converted the Senate from the world's greatest deliberative body into a persistent obstacle to sound government."

On the Importance of Judges (Environmental Forum, 05/01/13)
John C. Cruden, President, Environmental Law Institute: "At a recent meeting for environmental leaders held at the White House, we were asked whether our organizations really understand the importance of judges. I responded for everyone that you could not be in the environmental community without recognizing the critical importance of a well-informed judiciary in the upward trajectory of environmental policy....the United States has a staggering number of federal court vacancies: 68 in district courts and 17 in courts of appeal. Some 29 of these vacancies are considered to be emergencies. ... While all federal courts are important to environmental practitioners, the D.C. Circuit has a special place in our history and future."

Make ‘Em Plead? The House's “Gang of Eight” immigration compromise may require 11 million court dates. (American Prospect, 04/30/13)
Harold Meyerson: "At a time when the backlog of cases before the courts has reached staggering proportions, Republicans on the House immigration working group have come up with a proposal to lengthen judicial waits beyond all imaginable horizons.... even if the number of immigrants who must show up is reduced by half, that’s still a lot of people who’ll be lining up at federal courthouses if and when a bill requiring such pleas is enacted. And this at a time when the courts are already swamped, and when Republicans are either taking forever to confirm, or using the filibuster to reject, President Obama’s judicial appointments. So here’s my own proposed compromise, which I have vetted with absolutely nobody. If the price for a Republican sign-on to immigration reform is to drown the courts in pleading immigrants, Democrats should link that to the GOP agreeing to stop filibustering Obama’s judicial appointees.... You want ‘em to plead? Then give the courts enough judges they can plead to."

Obama's Judicial Nominees Blocked On All Sides By Senate Republicans (Huffington Post, 04/30/13)
Jennifer Bendery: "It's bad enough that there are 82 vacant federal judge slots around the country, a level so high that many observers have deemed it a crisis situation. But perhaps even more startling is the fact that of those 82 vacant slots, 61 of them don't even have a nominee....a closer look at data on judicial nominees, and conversations with people involved in the nomination process, reveals the bigger problem is Republican senators quietly refusing to recommend potential judges in the first place....since Obama took office, senators from some states -- particularly those represented by two Republicans -- have simply refused to make recommendations"

Why The Confirmation Of An Outstanding Judge Still Proves The Senate Is Terrible (Think Progress, 04/25/13)
Ian Millhiser: "It is fantastic news that Kelly is now a judge. Beyond the fact that she is talented and that she adds another name to the short list of potential Supreme Court nominees in a Democratic administration, former public defenders are very rare on the federal bench ... But a person shouldn’t have to be friends with a guy who is friends with Chuck Grassley in order to avoid a grueling confirmation process."