Federal Courts, Empty Benches: The Wednesday Vacancy Count 12/11/2013
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December 11, 2013
This week's Federal Courts, Empty Benches: The Wednesday Vacancy Count includes nominations, confirmations and vacancies from December 4, 2013 to December 10, 2013. Nominations, confirmations and vacancies occurring on December 11th will be reflected in the December 18th report.
The vacancy warning level remained at yellow this week after no new vacancies and one new confirmation. The vacancy percentage fell to 10.8%. There were no new nominations this week, allowing the total number of nominees waiting for confirmation to fall to 51. The number of vacancies of Article III judges fell to 93 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 | 9.4% or 17 vacancies |
| District Courts | 677 | 11.2% or 76 vacancies |
| All Judges | 865 | 10.8% or 93 vacancies |
New vacancies
There were no new vacancies this week.
New confirmations
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Patricia Ann Millett
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On December 10, 2013, Patricia Ann Millett was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on a vote of 56-36. Millett's confirmation to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit comes after she was filibustered on October 31, 2013. Her filibuster, along with the filibustering of Robert Leon Wilkins and Cornelia T. L. Pillard, lead the Senate majority-holding Democrats to change the parliamentary rules so they no longer require a 60 member majority to end a filibuster.[1] Millett was the first nominee to be confirmed under the new rules. There is controversy over her and the other nominees' appointments to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit because their confirmations will shift the court to seven Democratic-appointed to four Republican-appointed judges. Prior to her confirmation, the court was balanced at four Republican-appointed and four Democratic-appointed judges. Millett, being the first confirmed, shifts the balance to five to four. She fills the vacancy on the court that was created by John G. Roberts, Jr. when he became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Patricia Millett was an attorney for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP prior to her confirmation. She earned her B.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, summa cum laude, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude. Her confirmation removes one of the three vacancies on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and lowers the vacancy warning level from orange to yellow. |
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New nominations
There were no new nominations this 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
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