Cyrus Dugger

Bush & Judicial Nominations

A future of hope and opportunity requires a fair, impartial system of justice. The lives of citizens across our Nation are affected by the outcome of cases pending in our Federal courts. And we have a shared obligation to ensure that the Federal courts have enough judges to hear those cases and deliver timely rulings. As President, I have a duty to nominate qualified men and women to vacancies on the Federal bench. And the United States Senate has a duty as well — to give those nominees a fair hearing, and a prompt up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.

Bush: “[W]e have a shared obligation to ensure that the Federal courts have enough judges to hear those cases and deliver timely rulings.”

Response: Despite his stated interest in ensuring that there are enough judges in the Federal courts, by supporting the inappropriately labeled Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 against even the public urging of conservative former Chief Justice Rehnquist, Bush implemented legislation that greatly overburdened existing federal judges by transferring the majority of class actions to federal court.

The federal courts did not have any more space for an additional caseload, let alone an increased class action caseload. If President Bush were really concerned abut overburdening the federal courts, and not just pushing through conservative judicial activists, he would not have supported this bill without also increasing the necessary additional judgeships. Those who should know have stated that the federal courts just didn’t have the space:

I also criticized Congress and the president for their propensity to enact more and more legislation which brings more and more cases into the Federal court system. This criticism received virtually no public attention. . . If Congress enacts and the President signs new laws, allowing more cases to be brought into the Federal courts, just filling the vacancies will not be enough. We need additional judgeships - Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist

The Judiciary has neither the financial nor personnel resources to cover these new workload requirements.

Federal courts lost the services of about 1,350 employees in fiscal year 2004 as a result of budget constraints, face sharply increasing rental payments to the General Services Administration, and are finding it very difficult to cope with the effects of their existing caseloads this fiscal year, let alone this new, additional workload.

- Leonidas Ralph Mecham, Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, in a letter to President Bush

Now, the U.S. Judicial Conference is stepping in and asking for 67 new federal judgeships in order to have the supply of judges meet the demand for cases. It would have been nice if Bush had acknowledged this need in his State of the Union address, instead of just using rhetoric to push through ideological federal judge nominations.

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Posted at 9:47 AM, Mar 15, 2007 in
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