Nominations, Hearings, Confirmations:
Overall: There's plenty of schadenfreude to be found in the summary of Trump's appointments by retired judge Shira Scheindlin (SD-NY) for the Guardian.
McConnell: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is apparently encouraging conservative judges who are eligible to take senior status. Left-wing activist group Demand Justice is demanding an investigation into the retirement of DC Circuit Justice Thomas Griffith.
DC Circuit: President Trump nominated Judge Justin Walker (WD-KY) to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, commonly considered the second most powerful court in the nation. Walker is a protege of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. If you like your schadenfreude extra strong, check out Slate's take on the nomination.
D-AZ: Arizona Judge Scott Rash, nominated to the federal district court, has been attacked by several women for allegedly making inappropriate comments and being biased against women. Curiously, this attack came after Rash received a WQ from the ABA and was approved by the Judiciary Committee on a 16-6 vote. It is unclear if Arizona's senators (both women) have rethought their support for his nomination.
ED-VA: Virginia's D senators have recommended two possible nominees for a vacant district court seat. They are U.S. Magistrate Judges Roderick Young and Douglas Miller. President Trump has not yet made a selection.
SD-FL: President Trump apparently plans to nominate former prosecutor David Leibowitz for a district court seat. He now works for the car dealership owned by his uncle, a major R donor.
New Nominations: (UPDATED)
SD-FL: Aileen Cannon–AUSA, clerked for Steven Colloton (8th circuit)
ED-CA: Dirk Paloutzian–private practice
ED-VA: Roderick Young–magistrate judge, former AUSA
Armed Services appeals court: Liam Hardy–deputy AG, clerk for Ryan, Sentelle, Thomas
D-KS: Toby Crouse–Kansas solicitor general, clerk for Mary Beck Briscoe (10th Circuit)
Senate Judiciary Committee hearings:
May 6 (nominations): Justin Walker (DC Circuit) will be considered.
May 14 (business): Six district court nominees may be voted on.
Judicial emergencies: Judicial emergencies continue to delay justice in California and Washington. California has a long-delayed slate of nominees to fill most of its vacancies, while Washington has no nominees due to D senators Murray and Cantwell.
Recess appointments: President Trump raised the possibility of adjourning Congress to fill executive and judicial vacancies by recess appointment. This does not appear to be legal without the consent of Congress. There does not appear to be much value in filling judgeships this way now, with only nine months left in Trump's term. However, if Rs hold the Senate in 2020 (whether or not Trump is reelected), Trump could potentially fill longstanding district court vacancies in states like Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington where D senators have refused to sign blue slips for any nominee.
The Federal Judiciary:
Schumer: Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer unleashed a vitriolic attack on justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, saying
"You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price! You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”He later backpedalled somewhat as his comments were seen as an attempt to intimidate the justices.
ED-WI: Clinton-appointed Judge Lynn Adelman launched a vitriolic attack on President Trump, Chief Justice John Roberts, and the R-appointed majority on the Supreme Court. Adelman's rant repeats left-wing talking points on a variety of issues. Before appointment to the bench, Adelman was a D state senator and three-time congressional candidate.
5th Circuit: A panel with Judges Jennifer Elrod and Kyle Duncan in the majority has allowed Texas' suspension of abortions to stay in effect. They are Bush and Trump appointees, respectively. Notably, they overruled Bush-appointed district judge Lee Yeakel, who has a pro-abortion history.
WD-OK: Trump-appointed judge Charles Goodwin overturned Oklahoma's suspension of abortions during the coronavirus crisis. Lifesite is unhappy with him, citing several other Trump judges with non-conservative beliefs. But while several of them were compromises with D senators, Oklahoma has two R senators.
CD-CA: Judge James Selna quietly took senior status on March 3. Notably, he did so without any delay, and managed to not generate a single news article about this status.
9th Circuit: Senior Judge Raymond Fisher passed away in March. Notably, Fisher was the first of 14 Clinton appointees to leave the 9th Circuit completely. Nine are still active, and another four are senior.
State Supreme Courts:
Florida: Governor Ron DeSantis blew past the March 23 deadline to fill two vacancies on the Florida Supreme Court, citing his emergency declaration on the coronavirus and his desire to read the writings of the candidates. The legality of this may be questionable, but there doesn't appear to be a remedy other than to wait for an appointment.
The judicial nominating commission submitted nine finalists to Governor Ron DeSantis on January 23. One of the appointees must be John Couriel, Norma Lindsey, or Eloit Pedrosa, who live in the 3rd Appellate District (Miami).
Georgia: Georgia Governor Brain Kemp appointed Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Carla Wong McMillian to the Georgia Supreme Court. She replaces Justice Robert Benham, who was the last democrat on the court. She is a Federalist Society member and the first Asian on the court. She had a 'social distancing' swearing in.
Georgia: Justice Keith Blackwell will leave the Georgia Supreme Court in November. He was scheduled to face a retention election in November, but state law allows the Governor to appoint a replacement who will not face retention until later. Former U.S. Rep. John Barrow (D) and former state Rep. Beth Beskin (R) wanted to run for the seat. They have filed suit claiming that cancelling the election is illegal since Blackwell is still on the court. A local court denied the request. They appealed to the Supreme Court, and demanded that all eight Supreme Court justices recuse themselves. Five have done so. Barrow and Raskin were previously candidates for the seat of retiring judge Robert Benham, but that election was also cancelled when Benham resigned early.
Iowa: Governor Kim Reynolds appointed Matthew McDermott to the Iowa Supreme Court on April 3. McDermott is a lawyer with extensive experience who was counsel to the Republican Party of Iowa and has worked for many Republican candidates. Fifteen people had applied to the Iowa judicial nominating commission to fill the seat of liberal Justice David Wiggins, who retired in March. Reynolds has now made four appointments to the court. In a little over a year, three seats have flipped from left to right due to two deaths and Wiggins' retirement. The last liberal on the court, David Appel, must leave the court no later then 2022.
Kansas: Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly appointed lawyer Keynen “KJ” Wall to the Kansas Supreme Court. He replaces liberal Chief Justice Lawton Nuss. The notoriously liberal court recently upheld a limit on the size of religious gatherings.
Washington: Slate reports on Washington state's newest Supreme Court Justice:
While the federal bench grows more homogeneous by the day, Democratic governors are diversifying their state judiciaries to an unprecedented degree. On Monday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, elevated Grace Helen Whitener to the state Supreme Court. Whitener is a disabled black lesbian who immigrated from Trinidad. She joins Inslee’s two other appointees: Raquel Montoya-Lewis, a Jewish Native American who previously served on tribal courts, and Mary Yu, an Asian-American Latina lesbian who officiated the first same-sex marriages in the state.Wisconsin: Conservative Justice Daniel Kelly was defeated by liberal Dane County Circuit Judge Jill Karofsky 45-55 in the April 7 runoff. The runoff coincided with the presidential primary, so Karofsky benefitted from increased D turnout. The Wisconsin Supreme Court will now have 4 conservatives and 3 liberals. Barring any unexpected vacancies, the next election will be in 2023, when liberals will have a chance to win the seat of conservative Justice Patience Roggensack, who would seem likely to retire then at age 82.
Numbers and Trivia:
Many of Trump's appeals court justices are former Supreme Court clerks. A few of his district court appointees are as well. They are
MD-FL--William Jung--Rehnquist
D. Utah--Howard Nielsen--Kennedy
D. DC--Carl Nichols--Thomas
ND-IL--Martha Pacold--Thomas
SD-TX--Charles Eskridge--White
ED-NY--Rachel P. Kovner--Scalia
WD-KY--Justin Walker--Kennedy
SD-NY--Lewis Liman--Stevens
Walker is a nominee for the DC Circuit. Nielsen, Nichols, Pacold, Kovner are possible candidates for future circuit court vacancies. Jung and Eskridge are likely too old, and Liman is a liberal nominated as part of a deal.
Roberts clerks: Speaking of Supreme Court clerks, is it odd that Chief Justice John Roberts has so few famous law clerks? Wikipedia has only Senator Josh Hawley and one law professor with their own pages. For comparison, Samuel Alito, who joined the court about the same time, has 11 clerks with Wikipedia pages, including three appeals court judges, two solicitor generals, and Senator Mike Lee.
Georgia: The Georgia Supreme Court is quite young. The ages of the nine justices are 53, 55, 44, 57, 41, 38, 44, 59, 46, with mean 49 and median 46. The oldest judge joined the court in 2018.
David Lat: Lat, age 44, formerly of the Above the Law blog, has recovered from a serious case of coronavirus that left him on a ventilator for six days.
History:
Wisconsin: This article is a good overview of the recent history of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has had increasingly partisan and nasty races for more than a decade. (The left-leaning tone of the article says a lot about where NeverTrumper Charlie Sykes is ideologically these days.)
Resources:
Bench Memos (National Review)
The Vetting Room
FedJudges (Twitter)
Senate Cloakroom (Twitter)
Senate Judiciary Committee
ABA Judicial Ratings
Wikipedia-Trump Judges
Wikipedia-US Appeals Courts
Senior Status Spreadsheet
BostonPatriot diaries: History Trump DC-5 6-11 9th
Ballotpedia-State Supreme Court Vacancies
The Supreme Courts
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