judicial vacanices

by Jonathan Arogeti

Last year ended with 100 current and future vacancies on our judiciary, an alarmingly high rate that has persisted for more than two years now. As documented by a recent Brookings Institution report, the number of district court vacancies has “starkly” increased since the beginning of President Barack Obama’s term. Senate obstruction reached new levels this year, with filibusters of nominees who once would have been considered widely noncontroversial. One bright spot, however, was President Obama’s significant progress in diversifying the federal courts. A mid-year White House infographic on the state of judicial nominations reinforced these themes. Below are highlights from last year in judicial nominations.

The crisis.

• Last year ended with 30 seats that the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts deemed judicial emergencies on the federal courts.
• Delays caused by judicial vacancies have sparked, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts on the eve of 2011, “acute difficulties” for districts “burdened with extraordinary caseloads.”
• Between Sept. 2010 and Sept. 2011, nearly 15 percent of civil cases in the district courts are forced to wait more than three years for a resolution. And during the same period, the average time for a civil litigant’s jury trial was more than 24 months.
• Chief Judge Roslyn O. Silver of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona declared a judicial emergency at the onset of the year because of an “acute shortage of judges” in her district.
• Chief Judge Federico A. Moreno of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida said the vacancies cause an “undue hardship” on his district and Chief Judge Wiley Y. Daniel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado said the vacancies are “impeding” the judicial process.
• And the caseloads in both circuit- and district-level federal courts so overwhelmed their active judges, that many were forced to rely heavily on senior judges. Judge Richard D. Cudahy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit warned at the ACS 10th Anniversary National Convention that at this pace, the work of the federal bench will soon be left primarily to octogenarians.
• A special CNN report documents how the “massive nominee logjam” is having a “staggering” impact on the American people. And an article in The Wall Street Journal details how the backlog is forcing some plaintiffs to wait years for their day in court. In Denver, for example, the newspaper chronicles Amy Bullock’s two-and-a-half-year ordeal -- twice postponed -- to receive damages from her husband’s death in a 2006 truck accident.