When will the held-up D. Ct. nominees be confirmed? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Does anyone have any idea when the federal district court judges-to-be that Obama nominated (and who were being stalled by Senate Republicans, pending the outcome of the election) will finally be confirmed? I suspect most won't post clerkship openings until they're confirmed, so I'm curious.

I have a reason for being anon here; please don't freak out.

[Tangerine Gleam]

You're definitely right that they won't post clerkship openings until they've been confirmed. When the confirmations will happen, though, is tough to predict. My guess (which is not very well-educated) would be February or March at the earliest, but maybe I'm wrong about that. Historically, it has taken 2nd term presidents at least several months to push nominees through again, and Obama has been worse than most presidents about getting nominees confirmed. Hopefully he'll change that practice in his second term.

[Anonymous User]

The process will be slow. The Senate won't have time before Thanksgiving (the Sportsman Act will eat up this week and they'll most likely go to recess then). December is an absolutely packed agenda with appropriations, fiscal cliff, farm bill, etc. That being said, the Senate is hoping to get a couple of nominees through then, but if they do, they'll be the least contentious ones because of time constraints. For 98% of pending nominees, they won't even get considered until next year. Helpful should be that Reid is going to try to push through filibuster reform once the Senate comes back next year. If that gets through, then that should speed up the process. But even that will likely just move the process from glacial to plain ole' slow. Tangerine Gleam's analysis is probably pretty accurate for the vast majority of nominees.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Not that I know anything about how quickly this will all happen, but I found this interesting: http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2012/ ... seats.html