Courts Are Losing Bench Strength : U.S. judiciary starting to look like a ghost town

The Justice Department’s stalling on three judicial candidates for California recommended by two Republican senators underscores a growing problem on the federal bench across the country.

Before he left the U.S. Senate, Pete Wilson presented the Bush Administration’s Justice Department with candidates for two vacancies on the federal district court in Los Angeles and for one on a San Diego district court. Wilson’s successor, Sen. John Seymour, has continued to press for the appointment of Los Angeles Superior Court Judges William A. Masterson and Dzintra I. Janavs and San Diego trial lawyer James A. McIntyre. But to no avail.

TROUBLING DELAY: The Justice Department has refused to act on these candidates for the hollowest of reasons. Masterson, at 60, is reportedly “too old” for a federal appointment. This from an Administration headed by a 67-year-old who has all but announced he will seek a second term as President. Janavs is said to be seen as “too liberal”--although it was a Republican and staunch conservative, then-Gov. George Deukmejian, who appointed her a superior court judge in 1986. And McIntyre’s appointment may be blocked because he is “too obscure,” even though legal obscurity scarcely proved an impediment for Supreme Court nominee David Souter.

Late Wednesday a Department of Justice official denied that age or ideology or anything else was holding up these nominations and promised to give them another look. But the fact remains that this California dispute develops as the number of federal judicial vacancies grows, particularly in the district courts, which conduct trials. Nationally, there are 117 vacancies among 649 federal district judgeships. Twelve of California’s 55 district judgeships are unoccupied. Courts in other states are in even more desperate straits.

Part of the problem is damnable ideology. Partisan politics has always affected judicial selection, but it seems that under the Reagan and Bush administrations there has been an additional requirement for jurists: Would-be judges must cut the ideological mustard on such matters as civil rights and abortion. In many jurisdictions, the elimination of all judicial candidates who can even remotely be described as liberal has reduced the pool to a small number of lawyers, many of whom hesitate to give up lucrative private practices for the bench.

GROWING STRAIN: This growing shortage has caused civil cases to pile up awaiting trial while the available judges deal with the flood of drug and other cases that must receive priority. Federal opinions, traditionally respected, are increasingly delayed and sometimes show the strain of judges stretched too thin.

While he vacations this month at his Kennebunkport estate, George Bush would do well to remind himself of the qualities he should value most in filling the growing number of empty federal judgeships in California and elsewhere. Intelligence, integrity and fairness should be at the top of that list. No suggestion of ideological tests should figure in the process at all.