On the recordMarch 20, 2018
I thank the Presiding Officer. Mr. President, 1 year ago today, the Senate Judiciary Committee opened its hearing on the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. The Stanford Law & Policy Review has now published my article on one of the opposition's arguments made in that hearing and sure to be repeated should President Trump have the opportunity to make another Supreme Court nomination. Today, I want to look at the lower courts because no fewer than 138 positions on the Federal district and appeals courts are vacant. That does not include 33 vacancies that we already know will occur in the next year or so. Everyone must understand both the seriousness and the cause of this crisis. By itself, 138 is just a number. It is a big number, but it needs a frame of reference or a standard for us to know whether this number of judicial vacancies is normal or a serious problem that has to be addressed. I certainly don't want to be accused of partisanship, so I will rely solely on the standards and criteria used in the past by my Democratic colleagues. Let's first use some Democratic standards to evaluate the number of judicial vacancies that we face today. One standard is that the Democrats have specifically identified how many vacancies are unacceptable.…
