Federal Courts, Empty Benches: The Wednesday Vacancy Count 11/20/2013

Key: (Numbers indicate % of seats vacant.) 0% 1%-9% 10%-24% 25%-40% More than 40%

November 20, 2013

By Courtney Collins

This week's Federal Courts, Empty Benches: The Wednesday Vacancy Count includes nominations, confirmations and vacancies from November 13, 2013 to November 19, 2013. Nominations, confirmations and vacancies occurring on November 20th will be reflected in the November 27th report.

The vacancy warning level remains at yellow this week after one retirement and no confirmations. The vacancy percentage rose to 10.7%. There were no new nominations this week, allowing the total number of nominees waiting for confirmation to remain at 52. The number of vacancies of Article III judges rose to 93 out of 865 after one transition to senior status. 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.

Example tables

Court	# of Seats	Vacancies
Supreme Court	9	0% or no vacancies
Appeals Courts	179	10.1% or 18 vacancies
District Courts	677	11.1% or 75 vacancies
All Judges	865	10.7% or 93 vacancies

New vacancies

Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Mary McLaughlin

On November 18, 2013, Mary McLaughlin retired from full-time service on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and took senior status. McLaughlin served on full-time status for 13 years after she was nominated to the court in 2000 by President Bill Clinton. She will continue to serve on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a position she was appointed to by Justice John Roberts on May 18, 2008. The seven-year term will expire on May 18, 2015. McLaughlin's retirement creates a seventh vacancy on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The warning level remains at orange.

New confirmations

Hold-ups on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia

Delays in filling the three vacancies of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia continued this week as nominee Robert L. Wilkins was filibustered when the Senate voted 53-38, falling 7 votes shy of the 60 votes needed to end debate on the nomination. Previous nominees to the court, Cornelia T. L. Pillard and Patricia Ann Millett, were also filibustered in recent weeks. Republicans claim that the United States District Court for the District of Columbia doesn't require more judges as the caseload is already sufficiently handled. “ Unfortunately, the Senate will not be voting on legislation to allow Americans to keep their health insurance if they like it... Rather, we will be voting on another nominee to a court that doesn’t have enough work to do. The Senate ought to be spending its time dealing with a real crisis, not a manufactured one. ” —Senator Mitch McConnell, R-KY, Democrats are familiar with this battle, in that they blocked a number of nominees to the same court during President George W. Bush's term on the same grounds, citing caseloads on the court. The Democratic filibusters were ended by the "Gang of 14," a group of seven Democrats and seven Republicans who vowed not to block judicial nominees unless there were "extraordinary circumstances." As in President Bush's era, the lack of progress in judicial confirmations has spurred talks of altering the Senate rules so that it does not require 60 votes to end a filibuster. These talks have strong implications, in that if Democrats change these rules it would affect them in the future if they become the Senate minority. “ So far they have shut down the government, they have filibustered people [President Obama] has nominated to fill out his administration and they are now filibustering judges to block him from filling any of the vacancies with highly qualified people: We need to call out these filibusters for what they are: Naked attempts to nullify the results of the last election. ” —Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, The continued unrest over judicial nominees in the Senate has allowed the national warning level to remain at yellow for 16 weeks, the longest span since 2011.

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.

See also

• United States federal courts

Footnotes