President Biden is nailing it on appointing judges

| 10:00 pm EDT September 30, 2021
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One way in which the Biden administration has been building back better has been proceeding apace despite not getting much press. Just last month, I wrote about President Biden’s sixth round of judicial nominees. Today, to close September, the White House has announced that Biden is continuing his sprint with Round #8.

You can imagine the alarming state our judiciary system would be in had the twice-impeached Trump won reelection. Not only has Mitch McConnell received zero nominees from Trump as the former has lost his leadership while the latter wastes away at Mar-a-Lago, but Biden’s impressive picks are creating historic diversity as his nominations outpace those of any President in the past 40 years.

Biden’s new announcement of 14 judicial nominees, including 10 new candidates for the federal bench, brings the number of announced federal judicial nominees to 53. According to White House data, 72% of Biden’s nominees are women, 28% are Black, 23% are Asian American/Pacific Islanders, and 21% are Hispanic.

Beyond improving race, ethnic, and gender diversity, Biden has also been shifting away from the federal bench’s traditional makeup of former prosecutors and corporate law firm partners. As many as 17 (about a third) of Biden’s nominees are public defenders, while 13 (about a quarter) are civil rights attorneys, according to the data.

Victoria Marie Calver would become not only the second Black woman judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia but the first former federal defender to become a district court judge in Georgia. Charles Esque Fleming would become the second active Black judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio as well as the only judge on that court with a background as a public defender.

As a report in The Hill notes, “The Senate has moved quickly to confirm Biden’s judicial nominees, even as the body has lagged in confirming other nominees when compared to past administrations.” The White House’s press release explains it this way: “President Biden has spent decades committed to strengthening the federal bench, which is why he continues to move rapidly to fill judicial vacancies.” Keep it coming!