WEBVTT - Trump Passes Judicial Confirmation Goal

0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:07.040
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every

0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:09.680
<v Speaker 1>day we bring you insight and analysis into the most

0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:12.200
<v Speaker 1>important legal news of the day. You can find more

0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:16.160
<v Speaker 1>episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud

0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:20.759
<v Speaker 1>and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. President Trump surpassed

0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:24.520
<v Speaker 1>his judicial confirmation goal with a year end Senate sprint,

0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:29.640
<v Speaker 1>confirming thirteen district court nominees over two days before the recess.

0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.760
<v Speaker 1>That brings the number of Trump appointees to three at

0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:37.000
<v Speaker 1>district and appeals courts and two at the Supreme Court.

0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:40.920
<v Speaker 1>Democrats have been taking notice of the conservative stamp Trump

0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:44.840
<v Speaker 1>is putting on the federal judiciary. Here's Senator Amy Klobuchar

0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:49.120
<v Speaker 1>at last week's PBS News Our political presidential debate. We

0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:52.360
<v Speaker 1>have to immediately start putting judges on the bench to

0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:56.440
<v Speaker 1>phil vacancies so that we can reverse the horrific nature

0:00:56.600 --> 0:00:59.920
<v Speaker 1>of these Trump judges. Joining me as Carl Tobias, professor

0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.000
<v Speaker 1>at the University of Richmond's School of Law. So, Carl,

0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:06.040
<v Speaker 1>has President Trump hit his three year target for judges

0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:10.840
<v Speaker 1>or actually exceeded it? He has exceeded his target by

0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:16.120
<v Speaker 1>appointing fifty appellate court judgesty three district court judges, and

0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:19.640
<v Speaker 1>two Supreme Court justices. His target was one eighty and

0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:24.120
<v Speaker 1>he's hit one eight five. You mentioned fifty circuit court judges,

0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:28.560
<v Speaker 1>that's only five short of President Barack Obama's record in

0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:32.120
<v Speaker 1>an eight year period. Tell us about the circuit courts

0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:36.839
<v Speaker 1>and which have been flipped. Well, President Trump has set

0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:41.600
<v Speaker 1>all records for appellate confirmations at this juncture of a presidency.

0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:45.920
<v Speaker 1>He's been appointed the most fifty. There's only one vacancy

0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.639
<v Speaker 1>out of a hundred and seventy nine nationwide, which hasn't

0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:54.080
<v Speaker 1>been the case since the last century. And he has

0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:57.440
<v Speaker 1>been able to flip the Second Circuit, the Third Circuit,

0:01:57.680 --> 0:02:01.920
<v Speaker 1>and the Eleventh Circuit, so they all of Republican appointed

0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:06.800
<v Speaker 1>judges in the majority on those courts. Have we seen

0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:12.360
<v Speaker 1>a change from the more conservative judges at the appellate level?

0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:15.160
<v Speaker 1>Have we seen a change in the decisions yet? I

0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:18.440
<v Speaker 1>think it's pretty early to tell that. There have been

0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:21.120
<v Speaker 1>a number of opinions written by those judges, of course,

0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:25.040
<v Speaker 1>usually their concurrences or dissents, as opposed to say, the

0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:28.480
<v Speaker 1>majority on a three judge panel. But we're beginning to

0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:32.760
<v Speaker 1>see some of those cases where Trump judge makes the difference.

0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:36.800
<v Speaker 1>For example, in the case of the Fifth Circuit just

0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:41.079
<v Speaker 1>decided on Obamacare, where the judge supplies the third vote

0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:43.760
<v Speaker 1>that makes a majority. And so that's like it happen.

0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:46.839
<v Speaker 1>And don't forget the legacy. People who are in their

0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:50.200
<v Speaker 1>forties will be serving for three or four decades on

0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:55.600
<v Speaker 1>the appellate courts and will see more and more opinions

0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.000
<v Speaker 1>coming from those judges over taught. So, now that he's

0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:03.679
<v Speaker 1>filled virtually every vacancy in the appellate court system, Mitch

0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:09.200
<v Speaker 1>McConnell has turned to the district court the trial court

0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:12.840
<v Speaker 1>judges in the federal system. So what did he manage

0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:16.720
<v Speaker 1>to do before the Senate adjourned for the break. Well,

0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:22.160
<v Speaker 1>he was able to bring forward thirteen nominees and have

0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:27.640
<v Speaker 1>cloture and confirmation votes on all thirteen for vacancies around

0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:31.080
<v Speaker 1>the country, which is a substantial number. And that has

0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.800
<v Speaker 1>brought the number of district vacancies down to sixty seven,

0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:36.760
<v Speaker 1>which is the fewest that there have been in the

0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:40.080
<v Speaker 1>Trump administration, and it was as high as a hundred

0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:43.520
<v Speaker 1>and fifty. And it also has brought down the emergency vacancies,

0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:47.920
<v Speaker 1>which are the worst cases because of protracted vacancies and

0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:52.160
<v Speaker 1>huge dockets. That number has gone from eighty six at

0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:55.640
<v Speaker 1>it's high to forty one. And so it's good in

0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:59.080
<v Speaker 1>the sense of filling these vacancies, giving the courts the

0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:03.640
<v Speaker 1>resources they need, especially in civil cases. The ideological bent

0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.400
<v Speaker 1>of a district court judge is it as important as

0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:12.880
<v Speaker 1>the ideological bent of an appellate judge. No, it's not,

0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:17.719
<v Speaker 1>in principally because the reach of a decision or an

0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:21.320
<v Speaker 1>opinion out of a district court judge doesn't even bind

0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:24.440
<v Speaker 1>his or her colleagues in the same courthouse, as opposed

0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:30.080
<v Speaker 1>to the appellate level, where a decision, for example, out

0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:35.040
<v Speaker 1>of the Second Circuit binds everyone in New York, Connecticut,

0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:38.080
<v Speaker 1>and Vermont. And so because of Supreme Court here, so

0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.839
<v Speaker 1>few cases hunderd a year, that is the Supreme Court

0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:46.480
<v Speaker 1>for people who live in those three states, and so

0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:51.839
<v Speaker 1>those decisions are more critical to creating president in the

0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:56.479
<v Speaker 1>regional circuits around the country. And so the Trump administration

0:04:56.560 --> 0:05:00.719
<v Speaker 1>has focused like a laser on filling all of those vacancies.

0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:03.359
<v Speaker 1>How is he able to do this so fast? Is

0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:06.799
<v Speaker 1>he skipping over some of the debate who is vetting

0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:11.520
<v Speaker 1>all these candidates. Well, mostly they're being vetted by the

0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:16.520
<v Speaker 1>White House and Justice Department, and sometimes that leads to

0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:24.200
<v Speaker 1>insufficiently rigorous investigation, and sometimes in the Judiciary Committee there

0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:27.760
<v Speaker 1>isn't as complete investigation or questioning with rigor of the

0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:32.120
<v Speaker 1>nominees that some people would like to see. And nine

0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:35.400
<v Speaker 1>of his nominees received not qualified ratings from the A

0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:38.760
<v Speaker 1>B A and seven of those have been confirmed, three

0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:42.400
<v Speaker 1>for the appellate courts, so there is some slippage there.

0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:45.919
<v Speaker 1>And all presidents except Trump and George W. Bush have

0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:51.239
<v Speaker 1>honored and followed those A B A recommendations, going back

0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:56.000
<v Speaker 1>to Eisenhower, and of course President Obama refused to nominate

0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:59.560
<v Speaker 1>anyone who received a not qualified rating. You want to

0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:04.000
<v Speaker 1>have the finest people on the appeals industry courts around

0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:07.000
<v Speaker 1>the country. Thanks Carl. That's Carl Tobias, professor at the

0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:11.320
<v Speaker 1>University of Richmond School of Law. Thanks for listening to

0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:14.640
<v Speaker 1>the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to

0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:18.440
<v Speaker 1>the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot

0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:22.960
<v Speaker 1>com slash podcast. I'm June Brasso. This is Bloomberg