Rehnquist’s Aim Is True

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has tabbed the Senate’s petty, partisan game on judicial appointments as what it is: political retribution, pure and simple.

The conservative jurist made the criticism last week in issuing his annual report on the federal judiciary. Using his most pointed terms yet in assailing Senate Republicans’ stalling on President Clinton’s judicial nominations, he said the inaction threatens the delivering of justice.

One of every 10 federal judgeships is now vacant, 86 empty seats nationwide. “Vacancies cannot remain at such levels indefinitely without eroding the quality of justice,” Rehnquist declared. That erosion may already have begun in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where only 18 of the 28 seats are filled. The chief judge of the 9th Circuit, which includes California, has said he had to cancel hearings in 600 cases last year because no judges were available.

Rehnquist, while acknowledging that Clinton has been slow to nominate people to fill vacant seats, laid the blame for the delays where it belongs, on Senate Republicans who have sat on the nominations of worthy men and women while lamely complaining about their “activist” tendencies.

The chief justice noted that 101 judges were confirmed in 1994 but only 17 won Senate approval in 1996, with 36 confirmed last year. “The Senate is surely under no obligation to confirm any particular nominee, but after the necessary time for inquiry, it should vote him up or down,” Rehnquist said.

In his response to Rehnquist’s comments, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, denied that the large number of vacancies is burdening the courts--this despite the 9th Circuit’s problems, which Rehnquist found “particularly troubling.”

Hatch mainly sought refuge in the tired and baseless excuse that Clinton’s nominees would be “activist” judges. If the 42 nominees still pending before the Senate are unqualified as Hatch insists, why hasn’t the Senate rejected them? There are only two logical explanations for the fact that the Senate has delayed voting on the nomination of UC Berkeley law professor William A. Fletcher for more than two years and on those of U.S. District Judge Richard A. Paez and Los Angeles lawyer Margaret A. Morrow for nearly that long: To Republicans, still smarting from a Democratic-led Senate’s rejection of four nominees (including Robert H. Bork) forwarded by Ronald Reagan or George Bush, turnabout is fair play and tarring Clinton’s nominees helps raise support for conservative causes.

Sen. Hatch surely knows these are not worthy justifications. In the name of justice, he should move ahead.