President Clinton's judicial appointments controversy

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During President Bill Clinton's second term of office, he nominated twenty-two people for nineteen different federal appellate judgeships but the nominees were not processed by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee. Three of the nominees who were not processed (Christine Arguello, Andre M. Davis and S. Elizabeth Gibson) were nominated after July 1, 2000, the traditional start date of the unofficial Thurmond Rule during a presidential election year. The Democrats claim that Senate Republicans of the 106th Congress on purpose tried to keep open particular judgeships as a political maneuver to allow a future Republican president to fill them. Of the nineteen seats in question, three were eventually filled with different Clinton nominees, fourteen were later filled with Republican nominees by President George W. Bush and two are still open. Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader of the United States Senate during the 110th Congress, and Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democratic leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee under Reid, have repeatedly mentioned the controversy over President Clinton's court of appeals nominees during the present controversy involving the confirmation of any more Republican court of appeals nominees during the last two years of Bush's second term. Senate Republicans of the 110th Congress claim that Democrats are refusing to confirm certain longstanding Bush nominees prior to July 1, 2008, in order to allow a future Democratic president in 2009 to fill those judgeships.

[edit] List of failed nominees

[edit] References

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