I am delighted to see the Committee moving forward on several important executive and judicial nominations today, including nominees who had their confirmation hearing just last week. I am particularly pleased that the Committee is preparing to consider and report favorably the nomination of Judge Johnnie Rawlinson from a prior hearing. I trust we will experience no further delays in connection with these nominations. I am sorely disappointed that the Committee will not be reporting the nomination of Bonnie Campbell to the Eighth Circuit. She has completed the nomination and hearing process and is strongly supported by Senator Grassley and Senator Harkin from her home state. She will make an outstanding judge. I look forward to the Committee considering and reporting her nomination next week.

I was encouraged to hear Senator Lott say last Sunday and this Tuesday that he continues to urge this Committee to make progress on judicial nominations. The Majority Leader said: “There are a number of nominations that have had hearings, nominations that are ready for a vote and other nominations that have been pending for quite some time and that should be considered.” He went on to note that the groups of judges he expects us to report to the Senate will include “not only district judges but circuit judges.”

I am also pleased to see us making progress of some of the Executive Branch nominations pending before us. The Department of Justice should have its Associate Attorney General, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and its Inspector General confirmed by the Senate. I will continue working for the consideration of the many nominees to other important law enforcement positions, such as our U.S. Marshals and U.S. Attorneys around the country. We have several nominees who should be considered without further delay by this Committee and several more who have been forestalled from Senate consideration for some time.

With 21 vacancies on the federal appellate courts across the country, and nearly half of the total judicial emergency vacancies in the federal courts system in our appellate courts, our Courts of Appeals are being denied the resources that they need. Their ability to administer justice for the American people is being hurt. There continue to be multiple vacancies on the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Tenth and District of Columbia Circuits. The vacancy rate for our Courts of Appeals is more than 11 percent nationwide – and that does not begin to take into account the additional judgeships requested by the Judicial Conference to handle their increased workloads. If we added the 11 additional appellate judges being requested, the vacancy rate would be 16 percent.

At our first Executive Business Meeting of the year, I noted the opportunity we had to make bipartisan strides toward easing the vacancy crisis in our nation’s federal courts. I believed that a confirmation total of 65 by the end of the year was achievable if we made the effort, exhibited the commitment, and did the work that was needed to be done. I urged that we proceed promptly with confirmations of a number of outstanding nominations to the Court of Appeals, including qualified minority and women candidates.

Yet only five nominees to the appellate courts around the country have had nomination hearings this year. Indeed, today the Committee will report the first nomination to a Court of Appeals vacancy since April 12, and it will have reported only three all year. The Committee has yet to report the nomination of Allen Snyder to the District of Columbia Circuit, although his hearing was nine weeks ago, or the nomination of Bonnie Campbell to the Eighth Circuit, although her hearing was seven weeks ago. Left waiting for a hearing are a number of outstanding nominees, including Judge Helene White for a judicial emergency vacancy in the Sixth Circuit; Judge James Wynn, Jr., for a judicial emergency vacancy in the Fourth Circuit; Kathleen McCree Lewis, another outstanding nominee to the multiple vacancies on the Sixth Circuit; Enrique Moreno, for a judicial emergency vacancy in the Fifth Circuit; Elena Kagan, to one of the multiple vacancies on the District of Columbia Circuit; and Roger L. Gregory, an outstanding nominee to another judicial emergency vacancy in the Fourth Circuit.

At the June 27 executive business meeting, Chairman Hatch compared this year’s confirmation total against totals from other presidential election years. The only year to which this can be favorably compared was 1996 when the Republican majority in the Senate refused to confirm even a single appellate court judge to the federal bench. Again, that is hardly a comparison in which to take pride. Let us compare to the year 1992, in which a Democratic majority in the Senate confirmed 11 Court of Appeals nominees during a Republican president’s last year in office among the 66 judicial confirmations for the year. That year, the Committee held three hearings in July, two in August, and a final hearing for judicial nominees in September. The seven judicial nominees included in the September 24 hearing were all confirmed before adjournment that year – including a Court of Appeals nominee. We have a long way to go before we can think about resting on any laurels.

Having begun so slowly in the first half of this year, we have much more to do before the Senate takes its final action on judicial nominees this year. We cannot afford to follow the “Thurmond Rule” and stop acting on these nominees now in anticipation of the presidential election in November. We must use all the time until adjournment to remedy the vacancies that have been perpetuated on the courts to the detriment of the American people and the administration of justice. That should be a top priority for the Senate for the rest of this year. In the last three months in session in 1992, between July 12 and October 8, 1992, the Senate confirmed 32 judicial nominations. I will work with Chairman Hatch to match that record.

One of our most important constitutional responsibilities as United States Senators is to advise and consent on the scores of judicial nominations sent to us to fill the vacancies on the federal courts around the country. I continue to urge the Senate to meet its responsibilities to all nominees, including women and minorities. That all of these highly qualified nominees are being needlessly delayed is most regrettable. The Senate should join with the President to confirm these well-qualified, diverse and fair-minded nominees to fulfill the needs of the federal courts around the country.