President Donald Trump, who campaigned in 2016 on a promise to remake the federal judiciary, predicted last month that he would nominate more than 180 federal judges to the bench by the end of the year. He is well on track to do so.
This year alone, the Senate has confirmed 90 of the president’s nominees. The pace of confirmations has significantly increased, rolling along twice as quickly compared with the first two years of Trump’s presidency, when he placed 85 judges on the bench. Those first years saw two of the president’s most polarizing and legacy-making nominations so far—Supreme Court Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
This week, the Senate confirmed eight of Trump’s nominees. As it now stands, Trump has 51 more judicial nominees pending before the Senate. Should only a handful of these clear the upper chamber, the president and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will have made Trump’s promise a reality.
On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed one judge, Sarah Pitlyk, who was rated as “not qualified” by the American Bar Association (ABA). Republican Senator Susan Collins was the only member of her party to vote against Pitlyk’s confirmation.
In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham and ranking member Dianne Feinstein, the ABA noted that “Ms. Pitlyk has never tried a case as lead or co-counsel, whether civil or criminal. She has never examined a witness. Though Ms. Pitlyk has argued one case in a court of appeals, she has not taken a deposition. She has not argued any motion in a state or federal trial court. She has never picked a jury. She has never participated at any stage of a criminal matter.”
The president’s process of selecting and vetting nominees has been fundamentally shaped by groups like the Federalist Society, according to reports. The organization’s executive vice president, Leonard Leo, has worked multiple angles to produce a raft of reliably conservative nominees.
Below is a list of the federal judicial nominees under consideration by the Republican-controlled Senate, with their date of nomination, the court to which they were nominated and their official rating from the ABA, if one was available. The data is from the ABA’s website and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
Judicial nominees can receive one of three ratings from the ABA: well qualified, qualified or not qualified. In cases where the Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary is not unanimous in its verdict, two ratings are given, although the rating of the majority is the official rating. The relative size of each component of a divided committee vote, either a substantial majority or a majority, is provided as well.
The overwhelming majority of nominees are destined for one of the 94 U.S. District Courts (USDC), the federal trial court for most judicial matters. There is one nominee pending for the U.S. Court of Appeals (USCA) for the 5th Circuit and one pending for United States Court of International Trade.
Those nominated to the United States Court of Federal Claims were excluded from the list because they are not rated by the ABA.
The ABA determines a judge’s qualifications for confirmation based on professional credentials and experience. Political considerations and policy preferences do not factor into the group’s considerations. Instead, the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary evaluates each nominee’s professional background, competence and judicial temperament.
According to the ABA, a rating of well qualified signifies that a nominee is “at the top of the legal profession in his or her legal community; [has] outstanding legal ability, breadth of experience, and the highest reputation for integrity; and demonstrate[s] the capacity for sound judicial temperament.”
A rating of qualified constitutes an endorsement for the federal bench. A not qualified rating indicates a nominee does not meet one or more of the ABA’s standards for evaluation.
During the first two years of his presidency, Trump had the lowest percentage of judicial nominees confirmed by the Senate out of at least the previous six presidents. The Senate elected to confirm just over half of the nominees advanced by Trump during the first two years of his presidency, compared with 83 percent of nominees confirmed during President Barack Obama’s tenure.
Republicans have blamed Democratic obstruction for this lagging figure. Recent tallies, however, shine a more favorable light on Trump’s ability to get nominees approved. As of August, 70 percent of his district court nominees and 93 percent of his appellate judges had been confirmed, according to the Brookings Institution.
Date of Nomination Nominee Court ABA Rating 01/23/2019 Philip M. Halpern USDC: Southern District of New York Well Qualified 01/23/2019 Matthew Walden McFarland USDC: Southern District of Ohio Qualified (majority) Not Qualified (minority) 02/06/2019 Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. USDC: Central District of California Well Qualified 02/06/2019 Jeremy Brooks Rosen USDC: Central District of California Well Qualified (substantial majority) Qualified (minority) 02/06/2019 Mark C. Scarsi USDC: Central District of California Well Qualified 03/05/2019 Robert John Colville USDC: Western District of Pennsylvania Well Qualified 03/11/2019 Stephanie Dawkins Davis USDC: Eastern District of Michigan Well Qualified 05/13/2019 Douglas Russel Cole USDC: Southern District of Ohio Well Qualified 05/13/2019 Kea Whetzal Riggs USDC: District of New Mexico *Well Qualified (substantial majority) Qualified (minority) 05/21/2019 Gary Richard Brown USDC: Eastern District of New York Well Qualified 05/21/2019 Diane Gujarati USDC: Eastern District of New York Well Qualified 05/21/2019 Lewis J. Liman USDC: Southern District of New York Well Qualified 05/21/2019 Mary Kay Vyskocil USDC: Southern District of New York Well Qualified 05/21/2019 John L. Sinatra Jr. USDC: Western District of New York Qualified 06/12/2019 Kevin Ray Sweazea USDC: District of New Mexico Well Qualified 06/12/2019 David B. Barlow USDC: District of Utah Well Qualified 06/24/2019 Halil Suleyman Ozerden USCA: Fifth Circuit Well Qualified (substantial majority) Qualified (minority) 06/24/2019 John Fitzgerald Kness USDC: Northern District of Illinois Qualified 07/08/2019 R. Austin Huffaker Jr. USDC: Middle District of Alabama Well Qualified 09/09/2019 Karen Spencer Marston USDC: Eastern District of Pennsylvania Well Qualified 09/09/2019 Richard Ernest Myers II USDC: Eastern District of North Carolina Well Qualified (substantial majority) Qualified (minority) 09/09/2019 Sarah E. Pitlyk USDC: Eastern District of Missouri Not Qualified 09/09/2019 Jodi W. Dishman USDC: Western District of Oklahoma *Well Qualified 09/09/2019 Anuraag Singhal USDC: Southern District of Florida Well Qualified 09/19/2019 Daniel Mack Traynor USDC: District of North Dakota Well Qualified 10/15/2019 Silvia Carreño-Coll USDC: District of Puerto Rico Well Qualified 10/15/2019 Barbara Bailey Jongbloed USDC: District of Connecticut Well Qualified 10/15/2019 John M. Gallagher USDC: Eastern District of Pennsylvania Well Qualified (substantial majority) Qualified (minority) 10/15/2019 Sherri A. Lydon USDC: District of South Carolina Well Qualified 10/15/2019 Cory T. Wilson USDC: Southern District of Mississippi Rating pending 10/15/2019 Scott Hugh Rash USDC: District of Arizona Well Qualified 10/17/2019 Fernando L. Aenlle-Rocha USDC: Central District of California Well Qualified 10/17/2019 Sandy Nunes Leal USDC: Central District of California Rating pending 10/17/2019 Rick Lloyd Richmond USDC: Central District of California Rating pending 10/17/2019 Adam L. Braverman USDC: Southern District of California Rating pending 10/17/2019 R. Shireen Matthews USDC: Southern District of California Rating pending 10/17/2019 Bernard Maurice Jones II USDC: Western District of Oklahoma Well Qualified 10/17/2019 Stephen A. Vaden US Court of International Trade Qualified (substantial majority) Not Qualified (minority) 11/21/2019 Joshua M. Kindred USDC: District of Alaska Qualified 11/21/2019 John W. Holcomb USDC: Central District of California Rating pending 11/21/2019 Steve Kim USDC: Central District of California Rating pending 11/21/2019 Knut Sveinbjorn Johnson USDC: Southern District of California Rating pending 11/21/2019 Michelle M. Pettit USDC: Southern District of California Rating pending 11/21/2019 Todd Wallace Robinson USDC: Southern District of California Rating pending 11/21/2019 Jennifer P. Togliatti USDC: District of Nevada Rating pending 12/02/2019 John Peter Cronan USDC: Southern District of New York Rating pending 12/02/2019 Iris Lan USDC: Southern District of New York Rating pending 12/02/2019 William Scott Hardy USDC: Western District of Pennsylvania Rating pending 12/02/2019 David Cleveland Joseph USDC: Western District of Louisiana Rating pending 12/02/2019 John Charles Hinderaker USDC: District of Arizona Well Qualified 12/02/2019 John F. Heil III USDC: Northern, Eastern and Western districts of Oklahoma Rating pending
* An asterisk in the chart above indicates that one member of the ABA Standing Committee abstained from a nominee’s vote. Bolded entries indicate a nominee was confirmed by the Senate this week and may not be sworn in yet.
