Unanimous Consent Request

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I regret my colleague's objection. I hope they will change their minds. But once again I must rise to address the growing crisis of judicial vacancies in our Federal and district courts.

We all know it is the job of the Senate to responsibly keep up with the need for confirmed judges. Unfortunately, my friends on the other side of the aisle slowed the judicial confirmation process to a crawl. They did their best to slow the pace of confirmation when the Senate was under Democratic leadership and now are sluggishly moving on nominations even more so in the Senate they control. It has resulted in a nearly 10 percent vacancy in judicial positions throughout the United States. There are 31 districts that are considered judicial emergencies, meaning they don't have enough judges to hear the caseload. The longer we wait to move judges through committee and to the floor, the worse the numbers will get.

Let me take the Western District of New York as an example to talk a bit about these vacancies and what they mean in practice. Western New York has the cities of Buffalo and Rochester and the surrounding areas. There is not a single active Federal district judge in the Western Federal District--not one. The district has one of the busiest caseloads in the country. It handles more criminal cases than Washington, DC, or Boston. It is on the Canadian border, making it particularly busy, and yet they don't have a single active Federal judge. The delays for civil trials are by far the worst in the country. It takes 5 years for a median case to go to trial. That is denial of justice, just about. It is un-American. If not for the efforts of two judges on senior status who are volunteering to hear cases in their retirement, the Western District of New York would be at a full standstill.

The lack of judges has real legal consequences. In the Western District of New York, Judge Skretny--on senior status--has admitted that he is encouraging all cases to settle in pretrial mediation in order to lower caseloads. Criminal trials are prioritized while civil trials languish in delay. The two retired judges, who are the only ones reading cases at the moment, are spending far less time on each individual case than they would under normal circumstances. And defendants may be inclined to settle, admit guilt, and take plea deals rather than wait out a lengthy trial process.

As many of my colleagues have said so eloquently, the harsh truth is that for these petitioners, companies, and communities, justice is being delayed and thus denied. And the same story line is playing out in courtrooms throughout the country. This is not how our judicial system is supposed to work, and it should be an easy problem to rectify.

Right now, there are 13 noncontroversial judges on the Executive Calendar, and 3 more were reported out of committee today. Of those, three are highly qualified judges from New York, including one from the Western District. I know these nominees. They are brilliant people, experienced jurists, and above all they are moderate. This Senator believes in moderation in the choosing of judges. Larry Vilardo and Ann Donnelly are two whom I have recommended, and LaShann DeArcy Hall was recommended by a good friend, the junior Senator from New York, Senator Gillibrand. They should all be confirmed, but we don't know when they will come up for a vote. All of these nominees exceed my standards for judicial nominees. In his or her own way, each brings excellence, moderation, and diversity to the Federal bench.

They are not the only outstanding nominees we have. We have judges pending from Missouri, California, and several other States--represented by Republican Senators as much as Democrats--which are experiencing the same judicial emergencies and heavy caseloads. These are nominees who have already moved out of committee, all with bipartisan support. I am not offending the traditional committee process by asking simply to move them off the floor and onto the bench where they belong.

I came to the floor last July to request that we move to confirm these nominees. Unfortunately, my request was blocked by my good friend the Senator from Iowa. In response to my request, I was basically told: The nominees are moving along just fine. Be patient.

Well, we are several months later and still we have no indication that these judicial nominees will ever be moved off the Executive Calendar for a vote.

I was told--and I am paraphrasing--that if one would only count all the judges Democrats confirmed at the end of the last Congress, the Republican record on judges wouldn't look so bad. With all due respect to my friend from Iowa, I don't believe he can take credit for our work like that. One cannot slice and dice the numbers to make the Republican record on judicial confirmations any better. Listen to this. The fact is that the Republican leadership has scheduled votes on only six Federal judges this whole Congress--six--less than one a month. There is no reason for that.

Even if we did give Republicans credit for the judges the Democrats approved at the end of last Congress, we would still be far behind the pace of confirmations in the past because by comparison, through the seventh year of President Bush's Presidency where there was a Republican President but Democrats controlled the Senate, 29 judges had been approved--6 compared to 29. How is that parity?

When Democrats controlled the Senate during the final 2 years of George W. Bush's Presidency, we confirmed 68 judges. When Republicans controlled the Senate during the 2 final years of President Clinton's Presidency, we confirmed 73 judges. How many confirmations have there been in these last 2 years when Republicans have controlled the Senate, having a Democratic President? Six. The comparison numbers are 73, 68, 6. Is that equal? Is that the same as they are always doing, as they say? Of course not.

The Republican majority is confirming judges at the slowest rate in more than 60 years, and as a result, the number of current vacancies has shot up nearly 50 percent and the number of judicial emergencies has increased 158 percent. In no world is that a reasonable pace, as I have been assured by my colleagues.

There are no values more American than the speedy application of justice and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Frankly, neither of these can be achieved without judges on the bench. The equal and fair application of justice is necessarily tarnished by a courtroom without a judge. It is as simple as that.

So today I moved that we move to New York's pending judicial nominations, but the request was rejected. I hope my colleagues will think this through. It is a blemish on this Congress. It is a blemish on the idea that we are getting things done. It is a blemish when our Republican leader says this Congress is doing things at a better pace than in previous years.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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