It's not just Merrick Garland: The Senate is confirming hardly any federal judges

The decision by Senate Republicans to not even hold hearings on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, has garnered some attention, but the Senate has also left about 10 percent of U.S. district court vacancies unfilled, or 67 of 673 district judge seats. That's twice as many vacancies as George W. Bush at this point in his presidency, and 50 percent more than Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush, The Washington Post reports, citing data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The empty benches have left a mark: The current number of "judicial emergencies" — designated because a federal court vacancy that has remained unfilled for an extended period of time has left other judges with particularly heavy loads — is about twice as large as it was in May 2008 and May 2000.

The high number of vacancies is due in part to a large number of older judges retiring or reducing their case loads, but it's also clear that the Senate has not kept pace with those retirements. Senate Democrats say that Republicans have used "procedural delay after procedural delay" to create a "vacancy crisis," but a spokeswoman for Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said the "made-up crisis" is due to natural fluctuations in vacancies, not Senate dawdling. The Democratic-led Senate confirmed 58 district court judges in George W. Bush's last two years, The Post notes, while this GOP-led Senate has confirmed 16 district judges since 2014.

Jerome B. Simandle, chief judge of U.S. district court in New Jersey, tells The Post that he and his fellow judges "really hope the U.S. Senate can move the nominations forward, not just for our court but for all courts. We can't meet the demands of the public for fair and impartial courts without judges." Simandle, a George H.W. Bush appointee, noted that when he was confirmed by a Democratic Senate in 1992, so were 52 other district judges; this year, the Senate has confirmed six. That's a problem, and a needless one, recently retired U.S. district judge Shira A. Scheindlin argued in a New York Times op-ed in May. "Supreme Court nominations are inherently political. So it's no surprise that they are drawn out for ideological or partisan reasons. But district court nominations are different. Ideology is not the issue: Experience and competence are the only criteria."

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