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Federal Courts, Empty Benches: The Wednesday Vacancy Count 1/15/2014
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January 15, 2014
This week's Federal Courts, Empty Benches: The Wednesday Vacancy Count includes nominations, confirmations and vacancies from January 8, 2014 to January 14, 2014. Nominations, confirmations and vacancies occurring on January 15th will be reflected in the January 22nd report.
The vacancy warning level remained at yellow this week after one new vacancy and one new confirmation. The vacancy percentage remained at 10.8%. There were no new nominations this week, which allows the total number of nominees waiting for confirmation to fall to 54. The number of vacancies of Article III judges rose to 94 out of 865. A breakdown of the vacancies on each level can be found in the table below. For a more detailed look at the vacancies on the federal courts, see our Federal Court Vacancy Warning System.
Vacancies by court
| Court | # of Seats | Vacancies |
| Supreme Court | 9 | 0% or no vacancies |
| Appeals Courts | 179 | 8.9% or 16 vacancies |
| District Courts | 677 | 11.5% or 78 vacancies |
| All Judges | 865 | 10.9% or 94 vacancies |
New confirmations
District of Columbia Circuit
Robert Leon Wilkins
| Robert Leon Wilkins was confirmed by the United States Senate on January 13, 2014 on a vote of 55-43.[1] Wilkins' confirmation comes early in the year as he was the only nomination that was held over from 2013, which means he did not have to go through the entire confirmation process again. Wilkins was among the group of nominees that spurred Senate Democrats to change the filibuster rules in November of 2013. The DC Circuit is highly contested since it hears many cases regarding government policy and four of the current nine Supreme Court Justices sat on the court. Wilkins vacates a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, which he was appointed to in 2010.[2]
Wilkins fills the only vacancy on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The vacancy warning level fell from blue to green.[2] |
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New vacancies
District of Columbia
Robert Leon Wilkins
| Robert Leon Wilkins left the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after being confirmed and elevated to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on January 13, 2014. Wilkins was appointed to the court in 2010 by President Barack Obama. His elevation creates a third vacancy on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The vacancy warning level remains at yellow. | 
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Eastern District of New York
Joanna Seybert
| On January 13, 2014, Joanna Seybert assumed senior status after 20 years on the bench. Seybert was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1993. She was the first person to fill the seat that was created by U.S. Statute 104 Stat. 5089, which was enacted December 1, 1990. Seybert's transition to senior status creates the only vacancy on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The warning level rose from green to blue.[3] | 
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New nominations
There were no new nominations in the past week.
Weekly map
The weekly map is updated every week and posted here and on the vacancy warning level analysis page.
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See also
Footnotes
- ↑ Senate.gov, "U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 113th Congress - 2nd Session," accessed January 14, 2014
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Robert Leon Wilkins Biography from the Federal Judicial Center, accessed January 14, 2014]
- ↑ Joann Seybert Biography from the Federal Judicial Center, accessed January 14, 2014]
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