President make the picks for the Federal judges….
The US Senate confirms….
With a Democratic majority, even slim….
Biden will be able send his picks up for votes…
Who said there isn’t any politics in the law?
The nearly 90 seats that Biden can fill, which give their occupants life tenure after Senate confirmation, are fewer than former Trump inherited four years ago. That’s because Republicans who controlled the Senate in the final two years of the Obama White House confirmed relatively few judges.
Included in the tally are 10 seats on federal courts of appeals where nearly all appeals, other than the few dozen decided by the Supreme Court each year, come to an end.
One seat is held by Merrick Garland, whose confirmation as attorney general is expected in the coming days. Another longtime judge on the court, David Tatel, has said he is cutting back on his duties, a change that allows Biden to appoint his successor.
Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Thomas were appellate judges at the courthouse at the bottom of Capitol Hill before they joined the high court atop the Hill.
The late Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg also served on the appeals court, where they first formed their lasting friendship…
…
When Trump took office in January 2017, he had a high court vacancy to fill. Trump ended up making three Supreme Court appointments to go along with 54 appellate court picks and 174 trial judges, aided by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s determination to, as he put it, “leave no vacancy behind.”
Democrats and their progressive allies say they’ve learned a lesson or two from the Republicans, and intend to make judicial nominations a greater focus than in past Democratic administrations.
“It’s an exceptional situation where you have a president and the people around him people who really see this as a high priority,” said former Sen. Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who served with Biden in the Senate for 16 years. Feingold now is president of the American Constitution Society.
“I think President Biden knows that a part of his legacy will be undoing the damage done by Trump to the extent possible,” Feingold said.
So far, liberal groups are encouraged by the signals the White House is sending. White House counsel Dana Remus wrote senators in December that recommendations for new judges should come within 45 days of a vacancy.
Biden already has pledged to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court if a seat opens up. Justice Stephen Breyer, 82, is the oldest member of the court and could retire, but he has not announced any plans.
Democrats are in search of several kinds of diversity, following the Trump years in which more than 75 percent of judicial nominees were men and 85 percent were white….
No one over 45 need apply!