On Tuesday morning, President Joe Biden announced eleven nominees for the federal bench. The White House touted the group’s diversity – in both background and professional experience – and said the nominees would make history.
“These nominees consist of attorneys who have excelled in the legal field in a wide range of positions, including as renowned jurists, public defenders, prosecutors, in the private sector, in the military, and as public servants at all levels of government,” a White House statement said.
The statement added that, if confirmed, the nominees include jurists who “would be the first Muslim American federal judge in U.S. history, the first AAPI woman to ever serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of D.C., and the first woman of color to ever serve as a federal judge for the District of Maryland.”
Among Biden’s picks is U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals seat vacated by Merrick Garland when he became U.S. attorney general. Jackson, a Harvard trained lawyer who served as Vice Chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission under President Obama, is thought to be a front runner for a Supreme Court seat.
The Washington Post provides context to Jackson’s selection:
Biden previously pledged to name the first Black woman to the high court, and his picks signal an early departure from the Trump administration, which successfully reshaped the federal courts with nominees who were overwhelmingly White and male.
NPR reports that Trump “named fewer women and minorities than any other president in 28 years.”
Biden’s move to fill spots on the federal bench – which his White House claims is historically quick – comes after the GOP controlled Senate confirmed more than 200 judges during the Trump administration. Now that Democrats control both houses of Congress and the executive branch, progressive groups have urged Biden to move quickly to fill any vacancies. He inherited 68 judicial vacancies, according to Politico.
Biden has reportedly learned from the mistakes of his Democratic predecessors in the Oval Office. According to NPR:
…former Democratic Presidents Obama and Bill Clinton, whose party also controlled the Senate at the beginning of their terms, were slow to fill judicial seats, focusing instead on legislative priorities. By the time they did turn in earnest to filling empty judicial seats, they faced frequent Republican opposition including filibusters and, eventually, Republican control of the Senate. That allowed McConnell in the last two years of Obama’s presidency to hold many important appellate seats open by blocking the president’s nominees. He also blocked the nomination of Garland, now attorney general, to the Supreme Court.
