Chris Coons: “I ask my colleague from Arkansas, through the Chair, first, if we cannot receive consent to take up these nominations…”

“I ask my colleague from Arkansas, through the Chair, first, if we cannot receive consent to take up these nominations which were made over 15 months ago as a group. I wish to briefly describe one of the truly exceptional candidates. If I might also, I think it is important for all of us in the Chamber to recognize that the Court of Federal Claims, while the actual number of cases considered may have decreased, faces a steadily increasing number of complex cases which are subject to statutory case management deadlines that drive the workload of the court and have roughly doubled in recent years from 68 back in 2005 to 113 last year and likely double that this year. So the actual number of cases may be declining, but their complexity and their workload, because of the need for them to be resolved in a certain period of time, have steadily increased, and I will simply suggest to my colleague from Arkansas that looking more broadly at the workload would suggest some of these nominees are worthy of consideration and confirmation. I will briefly reference one of the five pending nominees, Jeri Somers, who has spent a decade at the DOJ civil division as a trial attorney but recently retired, having served in the U.S. Air Force Reserves as a lieutenant colonel, having spent two decades as a judge advocate and a military judge in the U.S. Air Force.…”