The Latest And Greatest In President Trump’s Judicial Nominations (Part 2)

AboveThe Law ^ | Jan 26, 2018 | David Lat

[11th_VA]

President Trump just announced his tenth wave of judicial nominees -- who are they?

Last week, I posted a roundup of the status of judicial nominations, for both circuit and district courts, for circuits up through and including the Fifth Circuit. Today I turn my attention to the Sixth through Eleventh Circuits.

But after my earlier roundup, some news happened: this past Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced his tenth wave of judicial nominees, twelve nominees in all. There’s one circuit-court nominee among them — John Nalbandian, whom I’ll discuss below in my section on the Sixth Circuit — plus eight district-court nominees and three nominees for non-Article III courts (the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, the Tax Court, and the Court of Federal Claims).

Professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond, a leading expert on the federal judiciary, shared these overall insights on the new nominees with me:

The nine nominees posted on Tuesday were interesting. I was pleased to see that five were for emergency vacancies in Texas and Louisiana, both of which have many, so I am hoping the White House will prioritize emergencies as there are 72 now. I also noticed that Red states are still taking precedence, as the vacancies continue piling up in Blue states like California, New York, and New Jersey. I hope the White House does start paying attention to the district vacancies and those in blue states. After all, 120 is a huge number, and district judges are the “workhorses” of the federal bench."

I concur. But as we’ll see below, blue states remain on the back burner when it comes to judicial nominations, for reasons mainly having to do with politics.

As for specific names among the new nominees, I’ll discuss them in their circuit-specific sections below. But six of the new district-court nominees require me to double back to the Fifth Circuit ...

[11th_VA]

And now for the humor:

As for Wendy Vitter of Louisiana…. as in, that Vitter, from Louisiana? Yes, Wendy is (still) married to David Vitter, the former U.S. senator (R-La.) who got outed as a client of D.C. Madam back in 2007. Wendy Vitter has senatorial support and solid credentials — Tulane Law, service as chief of the felony trials division in the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office, experience prosecuting homicides — and I expect her to be easily confirmed.

So if David Vitter ever strays again, then Judge Vitter can hold him in contempt of court — or worse! As Wendy Vitter quipped back in 2000 — when President Bill Clinton’s infidelity was in the news, but before her husband’s misdeeds came to light — “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony.”

[CMSMC]

Time to start ignoring blue slips and confirm them.

[IgnaciKat]

So Hillary calls up President Trump. She announces that Ruth Ginsberg has died and she’d like to replace her.

The President says, “It’s OK with me if it’s OK with the funeral home.”