With just 62 days until Election Day, the final push to the polls is underway, and we live in a political world that has changed overnight.
President Biden has solidified his legacy as a patriot who puts his country above his party and himself. He has turned the spotlight on Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, and her campaign has taken off like a rocket. But we should not be ready to write the end of Biden’s career or call his historic presidency a day just yet.
Biden still has more than four months left in office, and with the help of the Senate, he still has time to secure his place in history by confirming as many federal judges as possible.
A president may serve for four or eight years, but federal judges can serve for decades. Their impact on our rights and society is one of the most important legacies of a president’s term.
We need to let the Senate know that we cannot afford to delay our work on judges this year, either before or after the election.
The Biden White House continues to do its job by nominating outstanding individuals. The Senate Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL), continues to hold timely hearings and committee votes on these nominees.
Now it’s time for the full Senate, led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), to vote on the remaining nominees despite massive Republican obstruction.
While Biden’s judicial track record is already impressive, we must continue this effort.
He has diversified the bench more than any previous president. We all know about Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman on the Supreme Court. But circuit and district courts across the country have seen many similar “firsts” in the past four years.
The judges President Biden is nominating are not only historically diverse, but also deeply committed to civil and human rights and making a real difference in people’s lives.
The Biden judges have protected voting rights and struck down laws that undermined the rights of disabled voters. They have protected our freedom to learn and ensured that local library board members could seek justice when they were fired for trying to make books about LGBTQ people accessible to children. And they have protected the rights of transgender Americans, consumers, and workers.
The urgency to confirm more great judges now is not just because of their positive impact, but for a compelling reason: Senators need to clear the deck for new work next year, including new judicial nominations that are increasingly likely to come from a Harris White House.
Trump appointed 234 federal judges, the most by a first-term president since Jimmy Carter. Biden, with the help of Senate Democrats under Schumer and Durbin, has appointed 205 federal judges so far. This administration and this Senate can and should surpass Trump’s numbers.
When the senators left town for the summer, they had 21 judicial nominees fully vetted by the Judiciary Committee and ready for confirmation votes. About a half-dozen will be out of the committee by mid-September. There are still a few nominees who have not yet been heard.
To confirm these individuals, we need to get as many people through before the election as possible, then come back in a few weeks and finish things up during the boiteux period. It may require late night voting, but it is a small price to pay to protect our judicial system and the rights of Americans.
And the Senate must pay special attention to a handful of circuit court nominees awaiting a vote. These highly influential courts issue rulings that bind all federal courts in their respective states, and because of Senate rules, it takes much longer to confirm each of these appellate court nominees.
You can. In the fall of 2020, Republicans showed that they can move quickly when the party understands the importance of the federal courts. Since Labor Day 2020, the Senate under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has confirmed 31 more Article III Trump judges, including Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
We need to tell the Senate leadership that confirming this panel is something that one generation owes to the next. If you believe Harris will win—and I do. It will be close—this is what this administration needs to do to make her successful. Prioritizing great judges is important today and tomorrow, because if Harris is elected, she will carry the torch on this issue.
We have made history more than once under the Biden administration. Let’s do it again by giving our justice system and our children and grandchildren a lasting gift: more outstanding Biden judges.
Svante Myrick is the president of People for the American Way.
