Rare News Desk
With Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) using the so-called nuclear option to effectively end the filibuster, it looks like the federal courts are going to become even more political.
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Democrats can now appoint whomever they want to the federal bench, meaning that President Obama has free reign to nominate as liberal a candidate as he wants.
From The Wall Street Journal:
The federal judiciary, already ideologically polarized over contentious legal questions, may see the divide grow deeper after the Senate voted Thursday to permit confirmation of lower-court nominees by simple majority vote.
Until now, nominations for the district and appeals courts, like most measures before the Senate, could be blocked by filibuster, a procedural device requiring a supermajority of 60 votes to overcome. With the 100-member Senate usually divided by margins closer than that, the minority party effectively has held veto power over nominations.
As a result, that 60-vote threshold has long shaped the kinds of candidates administrations would consider as judicial candidates, a consideration that now evaporates.
Now that Obama is unrestrained to pack the courts with liberal judges, key courts will move left, including the pivotal D.C. Circuit Court where federal regulations are challenged. That court is at the heart of Dems’ nuclear-option maneuver. The court is now evenly divided between Republican and Democratic judges.
However, the court has several vacancies that Democrats want to fill with liberal jurists, tipping the court’s ideological balance and protecting Obama’s regulatory agenda.
Related articles
- Senate Democrats go “nuclear” (rare.go-vip.net)
