Senate confirms seven D.C. judges after outcry from District leaders
Because D.C. is not a state, Congress can decide what authorities D.C. can have, and in the case of its judicial system, it has almost none. The city must rely on the president to nominate judges to its local court system and the Senate to confirm them. But the Senate has routinely allowed the nominations to languish, at times using the judges as political bargaining chips in deals as other matters are resolved on the floor. The inaction has drawn frustration from D.C. Court leaders and city officials who say the vacancies overburden judges while creating delays in the city’s legal system, affecting everything from criminal cases to proceedings in family and probate court.
Last month, the D.C. Council appealed directly to President Biden and the office of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) — who is responsible for putting nominees on the Senate floor — to move swiftly to fill the vacancies before the end of this Congress. Members of the council and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) have lamented that the Senate at times doesn’t prioritize the city’s needs.
While seven judicial vacancies remain in the city’s courts, Schumer said in a statement Friday morning that with another two years of a Democratic majority, “the Senate will continue to work to fill as many vacancies as possible.”
“This Democrat-led Senate will not ignore the needs of the local D.C. courts,” Schumer added.
D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who chairs the council’s judiciary committee, said Friday morning that Schumer’s office was responsive to the council’s plea for help and “took decisive action to broker deals to get this done and get this over the finish line.”
“We’ve been beating the drum. … Let’s celebrate for the final couple weeks of December, but come January, we need the White House to make new nominations and we need the Senate to take action,” said Allen, who said he’d spoken with the local courts’ two chief judges. “It’s been a huge hurdle, but I know they’re relieved to see some new judges on the way.”
In D.C. Superior Court, the new judges include Briggs, a senior assistant attorney in the U.S. attorney’s office for D.C. (USAO); Arthur, who has been a magistrate judge in the superior court since 2010; Meek, an administrative law judge with D.C.’s Office of Administrative Hearings; Crane, an assistant U.S. attorney in the USAO; and Sanchez, also a senior assistant U.S. attorney in the USAO.
Shanker, who will join the D.C. Court of Appeals, is deputy chief of the appellate section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s criminal division.
Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said Friday that D.C. would be better served by a more efficient and consistent process to handle judicial vacancies. He’s not alone in that thought: Norton has previously introduced legislation that would permit nominees to D.C. Courts to be confirmed automatically after 30 days unless Congress lodges a joint resolution of disapproval. That bill advanced from a House committee but never got a vote on the floor this session.
City officials say they expect the courts to take on an even greater workload in the coming years after the city passed an overhaul of its criminal code that will, among other things, restore the right to jury trials for misdemeanor offenses starting in 2025.
“There needs to be a better way [to confirm the judges], and everyone would be better served — the public and the people who live in D.C., ” Tobias said. “It seems like a no-brainer, but there’s a lot to overcome politically.”
Meagan Flynn contributed to this report.
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