Garland Finally Gets A Confirmation | Get Ready For Wave Of Judicial Nominees From Biden
March 11, 2021
GARLAND GOES FOR GOLD
|Maybe it’s the pandemic, or maybe it’s just the last several years of American politics, but 2016 feels like a lifetime ago. It was then that PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA tapped JUDGE MERRICK GARLAND to be a Supreme Court justice. But as we all know, then-Senate Majority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL blocked the nomination, claiming that the public should vote for the next president to decide the lifelong appointment. Of course, just a few short years later in September 2020, Trump nominated JUDGE AMY CONEY BARRETT to the Supreme Court, and about a week before Election Day, she was confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. All that history brings us back to Garland, who yesterday was confirmed by the Senate in a vote of 70-30 to be the next Attorney General. He’ll leave his lifetime appointment at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to take over the Justice Department as the nation confronts an ongoing reckoning over civil rights and domestic extremist threats.
THEY'RE A'COMING
|Ariane de Vogue with CNN says we should all be ready for a wave of judicial nominees as the Biden administration turns its focus on the courts in the coming months. She reports, “As things stand, there are currently 69 eligible vacancies in various levels of the federal court system and 27 that will occur down the road as judges have announced their intent to retire. And the White House is almost assuredly keeping an eye on the seat of JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER, should he decide to step down this term and give the president his first chance to fill a Supreme Court seat.”
LONELY, I AM SO LONELY
|For her column this week, Linda Greenhouse writes in The New York Times about the first-ever solo dissent from CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS that was handed down this week. Not only was this his first time in more than 15 years on the court going it alone, but he also very rarely votes in dissent at all. Greenhouse writes, “His opinion was pure John Roberts: pithy, smart, with deep historical analysis leavened by a touch of sarcasm. ‘The court sees no problem with turning judges into advice columnists’ was his description of what will happen with courts no longer limited to deciding live controversies. No law clerk wrote that sentence. The view of standing that Chief Justice Roberts expressed in this opinion has always been his view of standing.” And now, Greenhouse notes, it’s Roberts who stands alone.