Jim Bunning: “Mr. President, today I rise in support of the nomination of Miguel Estrada to sit on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. As…”

“Mr. President, today I rise in support of the nomination of Miguel Estrada to sit on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. As has been said many times in this Chamber, Mr. Estrada is highly qualified to sit on this court and deserves a fair hearing and a vote in the Senate. There are four vacancies on the DC Circuit's 12 seats. Most lawyers consider the DC Circuit to be the second most important court in the United States. That means the court is missing one-third of its judges. That is alarming. The seat for which Mr. Estrada has been nominated has been designated as a judicial emergency by the Judicial Conference of the United States. To leave the seat empty for any longer is unacceptable and dangerous. In Kentucky, we know a little bit about vacancies. We are part of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and that panel has 6 vacancies right now out of 16 total seats. That is a little better from not too long ago when we had 8 openings, but it is not much better. In all, the U.S. Courts of Appeals have 25 vacancies, totaling 15 percent of the entire system. The situation is so bad the American Bar Association has described it as an emergency.”