Judicial Vacancies Skyrocket During President Obama's First Term

As President Barack Obama winds down his first term in office, he won't be looking back with pride at his record on reducing federal judicial vacancies.There are currently 83 empty district and circuit court judge seats. That means Obama is poised to end the year with more vacancies than when he was sworn in -- there were 55 when he came in -- and with far fewer confirmed nominees than his two predecessors had by the end of their first terms. While former President Bill Clinton was at 200 and George W. Bush was at 205, Obama is at 160, according to data provided by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Thirty-three of those 83 empty seats are considered "judicial emergencies," meaning that because of the number of vacancies at the circuit court level, the amount of cases per panel of judges [on a given court] exceeds 700, or stays between 500 and 700 for more than 18 months. In district courts, it means a single judge has more than 600 cases, or between 430 and 600 for more than 18 months. The more overloaded judges are, the more delayed the process of moving millions through the justice system.

Senate obstruction is the most widely cited source of the crisis. But Obama's record when it comes to nominating judges is also lackluster. He hasn't put forward as many nominees as his predecessors, a fact that Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said is fueling the crisis with judicial vacancies. By this point in their presidencies, Clinton and Bush had nominated 247 and 231 judicial nominees, respectively. Obama has only put up 215.

But naming more nominees doesn't mean Senate Republicans would necessarily move any faster to confirm them, said a White House aide. "If my coffee pot only makes one cup per hour, no matter how many coffee beans I pour into it, the number of cups coming out will still be the same," said the aide. "It doesn’t matter how many more judges we jam into the pipeline, the vacancy rate doesn't change at all. The bottleneck is the Senate."

Indeed, Senate Republicans haven't been brewing much coffee with Obama the past four years. The pattern throughout the president's tenure has been uncontroversial judicial nominees clearing the Senate Judiciary Committee but going nowhere the Senate floor. Then, after months of opposition, GOP leaders agree to clear some of the backlog and long-stalled nominees sail through virtually unopposed.

Historically, senators from both parties stalled judicial nominees when those senators are in the opposite party of the sitting president. But what has changed is the degree to which obstruction has become standard operating procedure since Obama took office. After four years, Obama has seen about 75 percent of his nominees confirmed. By contrast, the Senate confirmed 81 percent of Clinton's nominees and 88.7 percent of Bush's nominees by this point in their presidency.