To: Interested Parties
From: Marge Baker, Executive Vice President, People For the American Way
Date: April 11, 2014
Re: Judicial Confirmations Under Bush and Obama — By the Numbers

In recent days, Republicans have made much over the fact that President Obama has had more judicial nominees confirmed than George W. Bush did in his term. That’s unquestionably true, but taken alone, that factoid conceals more than it illuminates about the GOP's unprecedented campaign to obstruct the confirmation of President Obama's judges.

Most importantly, President Obama has been faced with significantly more judicial vacancies than had President Bush. So far, 270 vacancies have arisen since January of 2009. During the same period in the Bush administration, only 202 vacancies appeared. While President Bush had more than filled the vacancies which arose during his presidency, President Obama hasn’t been allowed even to keep pace with vacancies as they arise.

In order to fill those vacancies, President Obama has faced unprecedented obstruction of his nominees, including a record number of filibusters. In fact, more of his nominees to the lower federal courts have been subjected to cloture votes (35) than the nominees of every previous president, combined.

Before they're confirmed President Obama's nominees have been forced to wait much longer for votes after being approved by the Judiciary Committee than President Bush's nominees. The wait times have become so extreme, that President Obama's district court nominees are, on average, forced to wait longer than President Bush’s circuit court nominees.

As a result, Senate Republicans have significantly reduced President Obama's ability to address the judicial vacancy crisis in the courts right now. Currently, President Obama faces significantly more judicial vacancies than President Bush faced at this point in his presidency, including more than 50% more judicial emergencies.

Currently, 31 nominations have cleared the Judiciary Committee and are pending before the Senate, including 14 nominees who would fill seats designated as judicial emergencies. There's no reason for any of these nominations to be delayed, and confirming all of them would bring the vacancy rate roughly in line with the rate we saw eight years ago.

If Republicans are interested in treating President Obama now as President Bush was treated then, they should move quickly to confirm all the nominees currently pending on the Senate floor.

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