Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) appointed Valerie Stanfill to fill a vacancy on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court on May 10. The seat became vacant when former Chief Justice Leigh Saufley retired on April 14, 2020, to become dean of the University of Maine School of Law. Under Maine law, Stanfill requires confirmation by the…
President Joe Biden (D) announced his intent to nominate six individuals to Article III judgeships with lifetime terms on May 12: Gustavo Gelpí, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit Eunice Lee, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit Veronica Rossman, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit Angel Kelley, U.S. District…
President Joe Biden (D) nominated three individuals to Article III judgeships on April 29. With the addition of these three, Biden has nominated a total of 13 individuals to Article III judgeships since the start of his term. At the time of this writing, none of Biden’s Article III nominees have been confirmed by the…
President Joe Biden (D) has announced his intent to nominate 10 individuals to Article III courts for lifetime judgeships as of April 1. As of this writing, the official nominations have not yet been submitted to the U.S. Senate. For comparison with the previous administration, President Donald Trump (R) made his first Article III judicial…
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) announced on March 15 that he would nominate Rachel Wainer Apter to the New Jersey Supreme Court. She will replace Justice Jaynee LaVecchia, who is retiring on Aug. 31. Wainer Apter has served as a director with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, a counsel to the New…
President Joe Biden (D) has not yet made any Article III federal judicial appointments through March 1 of his first year in office. This is equal to the number of Article III judicial appointments through this point in all presidencies since President Ronald Reagan (R). Both the average and median numbers of federal judges appointed…
As of February 1, 2021, President Joe Biden (D) had not appointed any Article III federal judges. The average number of federal judges appointed by a president through February 1 of their first year in office is zero. Through the first year in office, President Ronald Reagan (R) made the most appointments with 41, and…
On January 3, 2021, the United States Senate returned the nominations of 37 individuals to the president at the sine die adjournment of the 116th Congress. On the same day, President Donald Trump (R) resubmitted 17 judicial nominations to the Senate. The list of returned nominations included 22 nominees for the U.S. district courts, three…
Donald Trump has appointed and the U.S. Senate has confirmed 234 Article III federal judges through December 31, 2020, his fourth year in office. This is the second-most Article III judicial appointments through this point in all presidencies since Jimmy Carter (D). The Senate had confirmed 261 of Carter’s appointees at this point in his…
On December 11, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a unanimous ruling in the case Carney v. Adams. The case originated from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit and concerned judicial selection in Delaware. The case was argued during the court’s October Term for 2020-2021 on October 5, 2020.…