Vacant court benches draw strategy session

[Geee]

Washington Times:

An aggressive White House drive to move stalled judicial nominees through the Senate is galvanizing activists on the left for an election-year fight to fill the bench with President Obama’s picks while Republicans are vowing to block what they view as Democratic overreach.

The president has invited 150 supporters from across the country concerned about the judicial vacancy rate to the White House on Monday for a strategy session with administration officials, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by The Washington Times.

In making the push just six months before voters go to the polls to decide whether Mr. Obama deserves a second term, Democrats acknowledge that they are disregarding the so-called Thurmond rule, an unwritten historical precedent that bars the confirmation of a president’s judicial appointees in the months leading up to the election.

The rule, which is informal and often ignored, originated with Sen. Strom Thurmond, a Republican from South Carolina who opposed President Johnson’s nomination of Justice Abe Fortas to the Supreme Court in June 1968.

In the invite, the White House accuses Republicans of subjecting consensus nominees to “unprecedented delays and filibusters.”

“Half of all Americans – over 130 million of us – live in judicial districts or circuits that have a vacancy that would be filled today if this obstruction … would end,” wrote Brad Jenkins, associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. “This unwarranted obstructionism … is detrimental to our courts and the lives of millions.”

In 37 cases, the courts have declared emergencies because of the lengths of vacancies and backlog of cases.