No vacancy
Article by Fred Barnes in "The Washington Examiner":
The biggest, boldest, and most lasting triumph of the Trump era is about to be completed: filling the federal courts with younger, smarter, and more reliably conservative judges, especially at the appeals court level.
Nothing like this has happened before, which is why it’s often and accurately called a “judicial revolution.” The wave of new judges scrutinizes laws as they were written and intended to be considered and interpreted, not as grounds for legal radicalism and social reform.
One of the final rounds in the conservative makeover of the federal courts played out last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was an unusual session. On Capitol Hill, senators sat a social distance apart. Others stayed home and were piped in electronically.
The lone witness, Justin Walker, is the epitome of the nominees that Republicans are putting on the courts. He is 37, went to Duke University, then Harvard Law School, was a law clerk to Justice Brett Kavanaugh, at the time an appeals court judge, and then clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, now retired.
Last year, Walker became a federal district court judge, though probably not for long. On April 1, he was nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the most prestigious of the appeals courts and seen as a hotbed of potential Supreme Court picks.
That his Senate hearing was scheduled so quickly was not a coincidence. That Democrats were in a sour mood wasn’t surprising, either. Demand Justice, a left-wing group, sought an investigation of whether McConnell had pressured U.S. Appeals Court Judge Thomas Griffith to retire without sticking around as a part-time senior judge, thus providing a vacancy for Walker to fill.
Might Walker be in trouble because of this? Lesser matters have doomed nominees. But the gods of justice were on Walker’s side. The day before his hearing, Griffith cleared things up. “My decision,” he said, “was driven entirely by personal concerns and involved no discussions by the White House or the Senate.”
Then the American Bar Association, frequently at odds with Republicans on judicial nominations, rose in Walker’s defense. It had rated him in 2019 as “unqualified” to be a district judge. That was due to his lack of trial experience. Appeals cases don’t involve trials. For those, the ABA declared him “well qualified.”
“Both issues blew up on the Democrats,” said Mike Davis of the Article III Project, which backs conservative judges. Absent something unforeseen, that assures Walker’s confirmation. Though 51 Trump appeals nominees had been confirmed, the stakes were high for No. 52. McConnell’s motto is, “No vacancies left behind.” A Walker defeat would be an embarrassment. Democrats would be thrilled.
They weren’t, particularly with Walker’s performance as a strong and likable witness. Democrats may have thought he’d be rattled by badgering him about his past criticism of Obamacare. He wasn’t. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said it was wrong to hold the hearing, given COVID-19. Booker is good at filling a large room with hot air. So, he let loose.
The Walker nomination “is an issue that in the midst of a global pandemic, when tens of thousands of Americans are dying, when, in my state, more people have died in about the last month than died in World War I, the Korean and Vietnam wars combined … we need the kind of leadership that calls [for] common cause and common purpose, not partisanship.”
No. 53 on the nominee list is Cory Wilson, 49, a judge on the Mississippi Court of Appeals. Democrats are bound to stress one issue with him: race. He went to Yale Law School where he was a member of the Federalist Society. After the success of the first 52 nominees, the path looks good for the 53rd.
The November election would end the revolution if Democrats win the White House and the Senate. Four years of their nominees would require a new strategy. Call it, “Leave many vacancies behind.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/no-vacancy
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