Equal Justice Society joined Alliance for Justice and a diverse coalition of 74 other organizations this week in signing an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, urging the Senate to return to “regular order” and permit swift confirmation votes on President Obama’s judicial nominees.
The letter decries the persistent pattern of obstruction in the last Congress that “led to the lowest percentage of a president’s nominees being confirmed at this point in his presidency than any president in American history.” The signatories call for the members of the Senate to “work together in a bipartisan fashion to proceed with prompt confirmation votes.”
Senate leaders have promised a new spirit of compromise and cooperation during the recent debates over rules reform. Although the Senate has confirmed five nominees in this session, that number does not even keep pace with retirements from the federal bench announced in the last few months. President Obama has already renominated 42 nominees who were returned at the end of the 111th Congress, and the Senate has pledged to accelerate the pace of nominations in the current Congress.
The 76 groups signing the letter represent a wide range of constituencies and reflect growing concern throughout American society about the crisis in the courts and the threat to the viability of the judicial system posed by unfilled judicial vacancies.
A PDF copy of the letter and full list of signatories is available online.