100 Judges (Now 101, 102, 103, 104...)
From a Tuesday White House press release:
As a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, strengthening the federal judiciary with extraordinarily qualified judges who are devoted to our Constitution and the rule of law has been among my proudest work in office.
I’m especially proud that the nominees I have put forward—and the Senate has confirmed—represent the diversity that is one of our best assets as a nation, and that our shared work has broken so many barriers in just 2 years.
Yesterday, for example, the Senate confirmed Cindy Chung to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit; in addition to previously serving as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, she will be the first AA and NHPI judge to serve on this circuit court. Today, the Senate confirmed Judge Gina Mendez-Miro, who currently serves on the Puerto Rico Court of Appeals, to serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico; she will be the first openly LGBTQI+ judge to serve on that court.
We have made important progress in ensuring that the federal judiciary not only looks more like the nation as a whole, but also includes judges from professional backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented on the bench. To that end, I have appointed more federal circuit judges with experience as public defenders than all prior presidents combined. Seventy-six percent of the Article III judges confirmed during my Administration have been women, and 68% have been people of color. I was proud to nominate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, and I am also proud to have confirmed 12 Black women to serve on federal circuit courts—more than all other Presidents combined.
Since long before the inauguration, I directed my team to make judicial confirmations a leading priority of this administration, and they acted quickly to begin consultations with Senators from both parties about how we could be as productive as possible. And we certainly have been productive.
This is a profound moment, and I want to thank Leader Schumer, Chair Durbin, and Senators on both sides of the aisle for working in good faith to reach this milestone for our country.
Joe Biden is a lifelong learner.
He learned a ton as a 36-year senator in the United States Senate. He learned a ton as an 8-year vice-president under Barack Obama. And he learned a ton through his own life experiences from his early upbringing and being forced to move from Scranton to Delaware when his father lost his job to the tragic death of his wife and one-year-old daughter to the immeasurable loss of his son, Beau, to cancer. Joe Biden has been through it all and it is his decades of experience that have allowed him to have been as effective as he has. While opponents on both sides of the aisle deride Biden's age through not-so-subtle ageist arguments, the truth of the matter is Joe Biden is exactly the right person for this day and age. To reclaim the country from Trump and Trumpism, we needed someone who could not only right the ship but who could also understand both the current and future influence of a Democratic administration. Joe Biden was the perfect person for this moment.
Appointing judges isn't sexy. It doesn't make headline news. But what Joe Biden is doing is critical to the future of this country. While Ketanji Brown Jackson is rightly the most visible of his judicial appointments, the fact of the matter is it could be any one of these 100 judges who make a critical decision 5, 10, or even 20 years down the road that impacts our entire country. We've seen this with the Trump judges. We've seen how a single, unqualified judge can overturn the United States mask mandate on public transportation, putting the health and safety of millions of people at risk. We've seen a second Trump judge rule that the Voting Rights Act cannot be enforced by private individuals or groups. A third Trump judge has blocked the Biden Administration from lifting the Title 42 border policy, keeping the it in place and stifling the administration's desire for a more humane policy. Three judges all confirmed on a party line vote. Three judges with disastrous, overtly partisan decisions that have set back our country in a myriad of ways.
If you were to list the typical American voters' top priorities, nominating and appointing judges wouldn't crack the top-50. After all, we saw the far left's disdain for Hillary Clinton's argument in 2016 that Donald Trump could potentially appoint as many as 4 Supreme Court justices. For them, Hillary's proclamation was based in fearmongering rather than fact. But, like everything from 2016, Hillary was right. And while the far left continues to downplay the importance of the courts, Joe Biden knows damn well how important they are. With his experience of helping to derail Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination in 1987, Joe Biden understood the danger of having an ideologue on the nation's highest court. He saw Mitch McConnell break the Senate in 2016 by rejecting 200 years of precedent and refusing to hold a vote for Merrimack Garland. He saw Trump's grotesquely unqualified trio ascend to the nation's highest court in a way that still leaves more questions than it does answers. His 2020 campaign promise to appoint the first Black woman to the nation's highest court was more than good politics: it was a way to draw attention to the historic imbalance of people of color in our nation's court systems and to motivate people to actually care about who sits on the bench.
That is why what Joe Biden is doing matters. Because these Biden judges have lived experiences both through their personal and professional histories. They have personally experienced the system racism that they may one day have to rule on. They have worked as public defenders and understand how the system is designed to create barriers for those who do not have the same resources as the more affluent defendants they see in their courtrooms day after day. Rather than a blind allegiance to a singular person like Trump judges, these judges have an allegiance only to the law and they will rule accordingly. Joe Biden prioritized these appointments early on and thanks to the critical Georgia wins in 2020 and the Democrats holding all their seats and picking up Pennsylvania in 2022, it's full steam ahead during these next two years. As of this writing, the Senate had confirmed an addition 4 judges today alone. At a time when the Republican-led House of Representatives will be utterly useless, the Democratic majority in the Senate will be more than willing to continue to appoint Biden judges at a pace that far outpaces the former guy.
Judges matter. Representation matters. Experiences matters. And what Joe Biden is doing matters, especially for future generations.