President Joe Biden’s ability to keep reshaping the federal judiciary hinges on the results of Tuesday’s midterm election, Reuters reported.
The midterm results will determine whether his fellow Democrats keep control of the Senate.
While his judicial nominees are not on the ballots themselves, the ability for a president to nominate and have those nominees confirm hangs on the ballots.
The Senate has the authority to confirm a president’s nominees to the federal judiciary including the Supreme Court. Biden’s Republican predecessor Donald Trump put a major emphasis on getting judicial nominations confirmed as he worked to move the judiciary rightward.
Biden, aiming to nudge the judiciary back leftward and make it more reflective of America’s diversity, has managed to match Trump in the number of such nominees confirmed – 84 – at the same point in their presidencies.
But Trump managed to appoint a whopping 200 plus federal judges during his four years.
If the Republicans take control of Congress, Biden’s number of judges may stop at 84.
Biden’s appointees in his first two years include one Supreme Court nominee. Ketanji Brown Jackson became the Supreme Court’s first Black woman justice.
Trump slapped three judges onto the Supreme Court, turning the balance of the court to be massively conservative.
Among Biden’s confirmed appointees, 75 percent are women, 25 percent are Black and 17 percent are Hispanic. This is a greater degree of diversity than any of his predecessors achieved in a judiciary long dominated by white men.
Democrats control the Senate by the slimmest possible margin and Republicans are aiming to erase that on Tuesday. If Democrats retain control, Biden has a chance to match or surpass Trump’s mark of having 234 judicial nominees confirmed over four years.
If Republicans take over the Senate, they could slow the confirmation process to a crawl. Even block it completely. Senator Mitch McConnell did just that during Democratic former President Barack Obama’s tenure.
For the last two years of Obama’s presidency, McConnell managed to block consideration of a Supreme Court nominee.
The shocking action had no precedent in U.S. history.
It allowed Trump to fill the vacancy as soon as his stepped into office.
If Republicans secure a Senate majority in the election, they would not actually take control until January. That means Democrats could make a mad dash until then to confirm as many as possible of the 57 remaining nominees Biden has sent the Senate, 25 of whom already have advanced through the Senate Judiciary Committee and are awaiting action by the full chamber.
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