Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a cloture vote for Tuesday at noon on Caitlin Halligan’s nomination to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Hopefully, that means the Senate will be able to finally cast an up-or-down vote on an exceptional nominee who was approved by the Judiciary Committee almost nine months ago.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy released a statement this morning on what it means that Senate Republicans would even consider filibustering someone like Caitlin Halligan:

Republicans’ shifting standards with respect to judicial nominations have required cloture motions to be filed on some nominations that ultimately won unanimous support from the Senate. Those shifting standards even required cloture to be filed on a district court nomination earlier this year. It would set yet another new standard if a nominee this well-qualified is prevented from even having an up-or-down vote, and one that could not be met by judicial nominees of Presidents of either party.

Indeed, Halligan’s exceptional qualifications and broad-based, bipartisan support cannot be denied:

• She has received the highest possible rating of her qualifications from a unanimous panel of the ABA’s nonpartisan Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary.
• She served as New York’s State’s solicitor general for nearly six years.
• She has a broad range of professional experience in government service, private practice, and academia.
• She has received the strong support of a bipartisan group of America’s most renowned appellate advocates, including Miguel Estrada (Assistant to the Solicitor General under President George W. Bush and former nominee to this same court), Seth Waxman (Solicitor General under President Clinton), Carter Phillips (Assistant to the Solicitor General under President Reagan), and Walter Dellinger (Solicitor General under President Clinton).
• She has been endorsed by women’s professional organizations like the National Center for Women and Policing, the National Conference of Women’s Bar Associations, the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce.
• She has the support of law enforcement organizations like the National District Attorneys Association, the New York Association of Chiefs of Police, the New York State Sheriff’s Association, and New York Women in Law Enforcement.
• She has been endorsed by top law enforcement officials in her home state like Raymond Kelly (New York City Police Commissioner) and Robert Morgenthau (former New York County District Attorney).
• She was awarded the National Association of Attorneys General “Best Brief” award five consecutive years.

Clearly, Caitlin Halligan is supremely qualified, mainstream, and uncontroversial. The need for a cloture vote shows how far Senate Republicans have moved the goalposts since claiming during the Bush Administration that the Constitution actually prohibits the filibustering of judicial nominees. It is hard to imagine what “extraordinary circumstances” – the standard set by the “Gang of Fourteen” in 2005 – would possibly warrant a filibuster in this case.

Chairman Leahy is right to mention that a new standard would be created if a DC Circuit Court nominee with such sterling qualifications and bipartisan support cannot even get an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. What nominee could possibly meet this new standard? Should Halligan be filibustered, then it seems unlikely that any vacancy on that court could ever get filled. Considering that three of the eleven seats on the DC Circuit are vacant (this one for more than six years), that would deal a crippling blow to what many consider to be the nation’s second most important court.

When the cloture vote on Halligan is held this Tuesday, let’s hope cooler heads prevail. And let’s hope that by Wednesday, we’ll be calling her Judge Caitlin Halligan.