Chris Coons: “I come to the floor today to join several of my colleagues in raising concerns about nominations to the Federal…”

“I come to the floor today to join several of my colleagues in raising concerns about nominations to the Federal judiciary and the Senate's role in carrying out its constitutional advice and consent responsibilities. From my vantage point as a member of the Judiciary Committee, I can see all too clearly that an alarming trend of more and more extreme judicial candidates appearing before us is growing, that more extreme judicial candidates are being nominated, and that the safeguards here in the Senate that are important to our vetting process are being threatened. Let me start by giving a simple overview of what has happened, first in terms of the speed at which we are considering critical lifetime appointments to some of the most central courts in our whole Federal judicial system. Just this week, my Republican colleagues have brought forward four circuit court nominees--four nominees in one week--beginning to end. That is more than the number of circuit court nominees than were confirmed in the entire first year of President Obama's Presidency. More important to me than the speed is the quality of our process of reviewing these important nominations. The American Bar Association has issued unanimous ``not qualified'' ratings for two current judicial nominees. That hasn't happened in over a decade--since 2006. The American Bar Association is not a partisan or a political group.…”