A filibuster fight this week over President Obama's judicial nominees is now practically guaranteed. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed for cloture Monday afternoon on the nomination of Patricia Millett, the first of the nominees for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, setting up a vote later in the week. Meanwhile, Republican senators escalated their claims that this court doesn't actually need to have its three vacancies filled.
"We do not need these judges. It's just plain as day," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "They have, by far, the lowest caseload per judge. They take the summers off." [...]
Plenty of other notable voices make the case for filling the court. Patricia M. Wald, a retired judge who served on the court for 20 years, highlighted the court's particularly complex and time-consuming caseload in a Washington Post op-ed. Sid Shapiro, an administrative law expert and Center for Progressive Reform member scholar, said the average number of cases before the court is actually up, from 1,152 cases during the Bush administration to 1,362 under Obama.
Also an advocate of filling the court's empty slots: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. He backed the court keeping all 11 seats in an April 5 report issued by the Judicial Conference of the United States, which is headed by Roberts. Sessions, for one, hadn't heard about Roberts' support.
"I want to see that quote. Where'd he say that?" Sessions asked, jumping out of an elevator he'd just hopped into. When HuffPost cited the April 5 report, Sessions grumbled about Roberts not being a real Republican.
"He's always advocating the court. He wants pay raises for staff," he said. "Otherwise, he's supposed to be conservative."
Imagine, a Supreme Court Chief Justice advocating for the courts. Let's reinterpret Sessions: We should keep the most important lower court under-appointed rather than let anyone other than a conservative on the court.
That's the story here. At this point the court is evenly divided between four Republican and four Democratic appointees, a deadlock Republicans want to maintain. It's not just Sessions. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) have repeated the ridiculous charge from Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that simple nominating candidates to fill these three vacancies is "court-packing."
In other words, the next filibuster fight is fully engaged.