Clinton Missing Opportunity on Court Vacancies, Some Say

When Bill Clinton won the presidency in November, a record number of federal judgeships were vacant, giving him an early chance to reverse the Republican dominance of the judiciary.

But change has been slow in coming.

While the President and his aides won praise for the nomination and easy confirmation of new Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, some liberal activists and court officials have been grumbling about the long delay in filling the lower court vacancies.

As of Aug. 1, roughly 15% of U.S. district and appellate court seats were vacant, many of which have gone unoccupied for more than two years. On Aug. 6, when the Senate adjourned for its summer recess, the White House sent to Capitol Hill its first nominees--but they are for just 13 of the 130 vacant federal judgeships.

Trial attorneys say civil cases are backlogged because of the judge shortage; activists say they fear the Administration is passing up its chance to shift the ideological direction of the courts.

“It is disappointing we are sitting here . . . with not a single nomination sent to this committee,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) complained during a hearing in July.

“I think it’s very serious,” said Nan Aron, executive director of the liberal Alliance for Justice. Clinton “needs to bring some balance to the circuit courts. If he doesn’t do it soon, his ability to govern may be frustrated by these courts.”

Because it takes the Judiciary Committee several months to examine the backgrounds of candidates for the life-tenured judgeships, no Clinton nominees are likely to take the bench soon.

If the first nominees are not considered by the committee until the fall, “I don’t see any judges being confirmed until early next year,” said Judge William W. Schwarzer, director of the Federal Judicial Center, a government-funded research body for the courts.

But Clinton’s aides say concerns about the delay are exaggerated. They note that the new Administration is following the same pace set by the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, neither of whom nominated new judges during their first six months in office.

BACKGROUND: During their 12 years in the White House, Reagan and Bush filled more than half of the 837 federal judgeships in addition to naming five of the nine Supreme Court justices.

By 1992, the Reagan-Bush appointees made up a majority of the judges on 11 of the 13 regional appellate courts.

But Bush’s aides failed to move quickly to fill newly created judgeships in 1991, and many of their nominations, made in mid-1992, were not approved by the Democrat-dominated Judiciary Committee. The result was that nearly 100 judgeships were vacant for nearly two years.

“We’ve had a record number of vacancies open for 18 months or more,” said David Sellers, a spokesman for the administrative office of the courts.

Among the vacancies are four federal judgeships in Los Angeles, one in San Diego and one in San Francisco.

OUTLOOK: Clinton’s first nominees to the lower courts will be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee beginning in September, and White House aides say they expect to send dozens of more nominees to the committee during the fall.

Why haven’t the nominations come sooner?

First, the Justice Department usually plays a key role in evaluating potential judges, and posts in that agency itself were slow to fill. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno did not take office until late March.

Second, Clinton and his aides had little time to review nominees because they spent nearly three months evaluating Supreme Court candidates before choosing Ginsburg.

Third, by tradition senators from the President’s party recommend candidates for district judgeships, and it took new Democratic senators, including California’s Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, several months to gather names and submit recommendations.