Throughout the legislative battles of President Joe Biden’s first two years in office, one Democratic priority served as a clear if quiet measure of methodical, consistent accomplishment: the pipeline of judicial confirmations to the federal bench.
In the final days of the 117th Congress, the scale of that effort – and success – is laid bare in both the total number of confirmed judges and the makeup of the selections themselves.
Biden and Senate Democrats, even while holding the barest of majorities, confirmed 97 Article III judges over the last two years, including a Supreme Court justice, 28 circuit court judges and 68 district court judges, according to White House data obtained by CNN.
There are no signs that that pace, which is notable in both the scale and level of diversity it represents, is going to slow in the next two years as Democrats prepare to expand their majority by a seat.
“You can be sure that judges will remain a top priority in the Congress to come,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
For Biden and other Democrats, the filling of federal judicial openings took on a new level of significance in the wake of the historically successful push by former President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans. Biden pledged during his presidential campaign not only to make nominations a priority, but also to pursue nominees who brought both personal and professional diversity to the bench.
Trump’s success marked a cornerstone achievement for then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, and elevated the issue among Democrats, who saw the balance of courts from the Supreme Court on down reshaped before Trump’s 2020 reelection defeat.
While a Senate rule change easing the pathway to confirmation rapidly accelerated McConnell’s efforts in Trump’s final two years, the pace Biden and Senate Democrats have maintained make clear what officials continue to pledge will be followed by action: that judicial nominations will remain a top priority.
That’s particularly the case as Biden stares down divided government in the back half of his first term, with House Republicans set to take the majority, slamming the door shut on Biden’s major legislative efforts in the process.
But that will have no effect on the confirmation process, which will actually be eased to a degree by Schumer’s newly expanded majority.