Why Aren't There More Black Federal Judges in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia?

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/11/why-arent-there-more-black-federal-judges-in-alabama-florida-and-georgia/281322/


The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals building in Atlanta, Georgia. Its territory comprises the highest percentage of blacks of any federal judicial circuit in the country. (John Bazemore/Associated Press)

Most of the conversation about President Barack Obama's judicial nominations these days focuses on the unprecedented Republican push to block even those candidates with meticulous professional and personal qualifications. Although there are still regrettable incidents of "false equivalence" in the reporting of now-routine GOP filibusters of these nominees, there seems to be a growing consensus that the tactic in the Senate is as nihilistic as was the House's government shutdown: You can't have a rule of law without enough judges.

Another theme that has attracted some attention about judicial nominations, a counter-theme you could call it, posits that the White House initially did a poor job of quickly and efficiently nominating judicial candidates. There is no doubt that this was true—but that it was more true during the president's first term than it is today. The pace of these nominations has picked up—at last surpassing the pace of George W. Bush—and so, too have the number of candidates who are persons of color. Obama now is nominating women, and minorities, at a pace almost exactly double that of his immediate predecessor. It's quite laudable.

But this column isn't about either one of those things. It's about the dismal record this president has in successfully nominating black men and women to the federal courts in three states in the Deep South—Florida, Georgia and Alabama—which have significant minority populations that are grossly underrepresented on the federal benches there. Coming from a president who has nominated more women and candidates of color than any of his predecessors, this is both surprising and disappointing.

It is more so because President Obama has had success in nominating black candidates to the federal bench in Mississippi, as "Deep South" as America gets. Just last week, the Senate confirmed Debra Brown to a federal trial seat in the Northern District of Mississippi. She is the first black female judge in the state's history and her nomination was supported by both of Mississippi's Republican senators, Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker. In 2011, another black Mississippian, James E. Graves Jr., was nominated by President Obama and confirmed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

[gopiscrap]

1. why? republican obstructionism and racism!

[LuvNewcastle]

2. I think Senators shouldn't be able to hold up nominees to the courts.

They shouldn't be allowed to filibuster nominations. The Senate should just take an up or down vote for each nomination. This kind of shit is a big reason for the huge backlog of cases, and as they say, justice delayed is justice denied.