The Constitution requires Senate consent before the president can appoint an individual federal judge and gives Congress authority to create, abolish or rearrange federal judicial positions. These two responsibilities converged when President Obama made three nominations to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which clearly needs no more judges.
Creating a politically useful statistic requires only an agenda and a calculator, but this debate needs something more objective. In a July 2006 letter, Judiciary Committee Democrats opposed more D.C. Circuit appointments for two reasons: The court’s caseload had declined, and more pressing “judicial emergency” vacancies had not been filled. Assuming that those criteria were useful for Republican nominees, let’s apply them now to Democratic nominees.
