Reno Blames Senate for Slow Pace in Confirming Judges

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno on Tuesday accused the U.S. Senate of damaging the judicial system by deliberately slowing the pace of judicial confirmations.

In her harshest comments to date on the issue, Reno warned that one of every eight federal judgeships is vacant, a total of 101 vacancies out of 844 federal court positions nationwide.

“We have seen an unprecedented slowdown in the Senate confirmation machinery,” the attorney general told the American Bar Assn. at its annual meeting here.

The slowdown, she said, “has very real and very detrimental impacts on all parts of our justice system. Litigants, judges, the quality of justice that our system is able to deliver--all are impacted.”

Reno also spoke out against what she said are efforts to “undermine the very credibility of the judiciary” by congressional and other critics who have assailed federal judges for judicial activism. She spoke against calls for eliminating life tenure for judges, or for allowing impeachment of judges who issue rulings that Congress deems “particularly egregious.”

But Reno devoted most of her comments to judicial vacancies.

In recent months, some liberal critics of the administration have blamed President Clinton for allowing Senate Republicans to intimidate him into paralysis on judicial appointments by attacking many of his nominees for their liberal leanings.

Clinton has remained silent on the subject, but some analysts said Tuesday that they believe Reno’s speech may signal the administration’s willingness to turn up the heat on Senate Republicans.

“Vacancies are increasing at a time when the workload of the federal courts is also growing,” Reno said.

She said the number of judicial emergencies, defined as judgeships vacant for 18 months or more, has risen to 33.

In California, UC Berkeley law professor William Fletcher has the dubious distinction of having waited longer than any other federal court nominee for confirmation. Fletcher was named to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on April 25, 1995. His nomination has been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee but has not been brought before the full Senate.

Jerome Shestack, incoming president of the ABA, praised Reno’s comments.

“I think the attorney general was right on. I think the Senate’s duty is to advise and consent, not to drag and delay.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) has said that the White House is as much to blame as the Senate for the slow pace of judicial confirmations. Hatch has faulted the administration for being slow to send up nominations, and for nominating judges who are too liberal and too prone to activism.

But Reno rejected that criticism, defending the administration’s record for making timely nominations of well qualified candidates, and blaming the Senate for obstructing appointments for partisan political reasons.

“We need to put any partisan differences aside and work together to resolve this situation,” Reno said. “Surely the framers [of the U.S. Constitution] did not intend Congress to obstruct the appointment of much-needed judges.”

Thomas Jipping, an attorney with the conservative Free Congress Foundation in Washington, D.C., blasted Reno’s speech as an effort to create a crisis where none exists.

“To talk in terms of a crisis, to pretend that this is unprecedented, is ridiculous. It’s just not true,” said Jipping, director of the foundation’s committee that monitors judicial nominations. If the confirmation pace has slowed, Jipping said, it is because the Senate is scrutinizing Clinton nominees more closely.

“It is the kind of judges and not the number of judges that we should be focused on,” he said.

But a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said that a number of factors have combined to create a crisis in the federal judicial system.

“There have certainly been times where there have been more vacancies,” said David Sellers, “but we have a combination here of a very large number of judicial emergencies, no new judgeships created by Congress in 6 1/2 years and continually rising caseloads. That’s where you get an emergency.”

Reno pointed out that the shortage of judges on the 9th Circuit Court, responsible for the western United States, forced the court to cancel 600 hearings this year, causing delays in a wide range of cases.

Reno’s speech “is a helpful step” toward making the public aware of the situation, but the administration should do more, said Stephan Kline, legislative counsel with the liberal Alliance for Justice.

“The president has done very little,” Kline said. “He has neither put a lot of nominations forward, nor fought very vigorously for his nominees. The president should be thinking about his judicial legacy.”