Earlier this year, Judge Edward Kiel, a federal magistrate judge, was a finalist for a seat on the New Jersey Supreme Court. While Kiel did not get that spot, he has been nominated for a seat on the federal bench.
Background
Born in 1965 in South Korea, Kiel graduated from the Rutgers University in 1988 and then attended Notre Dame University School of Law, getting his J.D in 1991.
After graduating, Kiel clerked for Judge Michael Imbriani on the Superior Court of New Jersey and then joined Jamieson Moore Peskin & Spicer. In 1994, Kiel moved to Beattie Padovano and then, in 1998, to Cole Schotz, P.C., where he became a Partner in 2001.
Since 2019, Kiel has been serving as a U.S. Magistrate Judge based in Newark.
History of the Seat
The seat Kiel has been nominated for opened earlier this week on October 31, with Judge Kevin McNulty’s move to senior status.
Legal Experience
Kiel has spent virtually his entire pre-bench career working in private practice. While he shifted from firm to firm throughout his career, Kiel focused his practice on commercial law, including insurance defense. Over his career, Kiel has tried approximately ten cases to a jury.
Among the notable cases he has handled, Kiel represented ISOL Technology, Inc., who was sued for misappropriation of trade secrets. See LBDS, Inc. v. ISOL Technology, Inc., 11-00428 E.D. Tex.). After a two week jury trial ended in a verdict for the plaintiffs, Judge Leonard Davis granted a motion to vacate the verdict after new evidence revealed that some of the plaintiff’s exhibits had been forged.
On the appellate side, Kiel argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court in defending a construction lien signed by an attorney operating under a power of attorney agreement. See D.D.B. Interior Contracting. Inc. v. Trends Urban Renewal Association, Ltd., 176 N.J. 164 (2003). The case ended in a unanimous ruling for Kiel’s position. See id.
Judicial Experience
Kiel has served as a U.S. Magistrate judge in Maryland since his appointment in 2019. In this role, he handles settlement, discovery, and makes recommendations on dispositive motions. He also presides over cases where the parties consent.
Due to his relatively short tenure on the bench, Kiel has not presided over any matters that proceeded to verdict or judgment.
Political Activities
Kiel has a number of political donations to his name, all to Democratic candidates.
Overall Assessment
It is perhaps a testament to the relative lack of controversy in Kiel’s background that his Judiciary Committee hearing led to Senators largely steering clear of it in order to focus on other issues. Kiel is likely to see a relatively routine confirmation.
The Vetting Room 
I seem to remember Keil having more of a progressive background. I don’t see it in the write up here & can’t remember off the top of my head but I definitely remember being pleased when I did my research up on him. I have to go back & look later.
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@Dequan, it was that he had done some work with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF).
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Ah he’s that’s it. I remember giving him a B+ for a reason. I took a lot off for his age.
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Republicans aren’t making Kiel’s nomination a priority. He’ll likely be confirmed by a fair margin.
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Oops, I posted this on the old comment section.
Saw this last week on ACS’s judicial tracker update.
“The current administration is behind its predecessor in terms of the number of Article III confirmations, and risks falling behind further. The Biden-Harris Administration is at 147 Article III confirmations as of the morning of October 26. The Trump Administration was at 157 Article III confirmations through October 2019, and 187 Article III confirmations through the third year of the administration.”
It’s frustrating how quickly they could catch up to Trumps confirmations if they really tried. As of today, Biden has 148 confirmations and 40 nominees in the pipeline including 25 waiting to be confirmed.
It’ll be a real gut punch if the reason Biden doesn’t get close to Trumps confirmations has less to do with vacancies and more so because they just didn’t confirm nominees.
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Really all that matters is the final result at the end of this term. I would like to see the senate at least confirm the 4 appellate and 19 district nominees that are currently awaiting floor action before the end of the year. If they can do that, it would be 170 confirmations and I would be OK with that.
The biggest concern I have, by far, is getting quality nominees for the 3rd, 4th, and 6th and not missing any additional SJC hearings next 12 months. There are just only so many slots. Plus, you want to make sure the deck is clear for any surprise vacancies late in the year.
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@Joe
That is KEY. Clear the deck before the end of the year so next year there will be as little nominations pending as possible for any surprise vacancies. We have had two ends of the years under Biden’s presidency so far. The end of 2001 was great with 9 nominees fast tracked & confirmed in the finally 24 hours of the session. 2022 we did not get any such deals, albeit the Democrats unexpectedly gained a seat so perhaps they were willing to go into the next year with a larger workload.
I fully expect the senate to miss a lot of time next year being out of session likely all of August & October. That puts a high priority on the end of this year with hopefully a 2021-like ending.
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Definitely Dequan. The goal should be to be completely caught up by summer so that they can spend the remaining few months campaigning, doing any symbolic votes they want to, and addressing vacancies that open late in the year. We do not want to be scrambling to confirm 20+ nominees like we were potentially facing last year.
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FYI – looks like the PA senators have kicked off the nominee process. Fetterman posted:
ICYMI:
@SenBobCasey & I are accepting applications for Federal District Court Judge vacancies in the Eastern and Middle Districts of PA.
I encourage every qualified Pennsylvania lawyer who wants to serve the public and advance equal justice to apply.
As of right now, they need to fill Malachy Mannion’s seat in the Middle District (will prob go to a Harrisburg based lawyer) and Cynthia Rufe’s (Philly) seat in the Eastern District.
However, Nitza Quinones Alejandro (EDPA) is currently eligible for senior status and Gerald McHugh (EDMP) becomes eligible next year so we could see some additional openings coming up.
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Is he kidding??? They are NOW accepting applications for the EDPA… The seat has been vacant since December 31, 2021. That’s ridiculous.
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Yeah, I had the same reaction.
The tweet actually went up slightly ahead on Mannion’s announcement, and you’ll see in the comments that some people were confused by him asking for MDPA applicants. Once Mannion announce, it made sense. I’m kind of wondering if the PA senators have a heads up that more openings are coming and are trying to get ahead of it by asking for EDPA applicants.
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But even if they had a heads up on additional EDPA vacancies, I would think they would have had some names left over from the initial vacancy. I would even give them credit for throwing out all of the names they had before Fetterman won, assuming they could get more progressive nominees with two Democrat senators versus with Toomey. But Fetterman won over 11 months ago. This would be a dereliction of duty if they are just NOW getting started on filling seats in Philadelphia.
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I found this ruling from Jacquelyn D. Austin… “Austin also ruled in a 2019 civil case that there was reasonable video evidence a Greenville County Sheriff’s deputy slammed a police car door into a handcuffed man’s head, allowing the case to continue. A jury earlier this year sided for the deputy, who said he did not intend to close the door on the suspect.”
I mentioned it the other day, she definitely sounds like she is to the left of judge Childs who she would be replacing.
(https://news.yahoo.com/biden-names-us-magistrate-sc-173444430.html)
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To follow up on @Dequan’s point, the search for nominees for EDPA could have started while Fetterman was out, given how staff-driven these things are.
The 3 cloture motions for next week are very encouraging, but as was said above, we need to clear the slate of current nominees in this session, rather than holding over any, given how little time they’ll be around next year. Schumer will give Brown, Tester, and Manchin loads of time to be absent and campaign, while Tim Scott will be back to full attendance by February.
Q for the group: do we think that this week’s nominees are the last new ones of 2023? Seems like they’ll be hard to get confirmed this year in the absence of UC, but could happen, I suppose.
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I would guess we will get at least two more batches of new nominees this year. Remember the batches have been small. The days of the Summer of 2022 where we get double digit nominees in one week are over. So I would assume between the blue state district court vacancies, the three circuit court vacancies & red state vacancies that they are working to fill, I can see at least two more batches this year.
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Ray, I would guess that we’ll get some more nominees on 11/15 to set up our last hearing of the year and then another probably sometime in December to set up a hearing in January.
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Just thinking about which seats might get noms before the end of the year..
Ideally, we’ll get noms for the CIrcuit Court openings.
As for district seats, Oregon, EDMI, and SDNY are probably the best candidates in the blue states.
The last two drops have been dominated by red state noms, so if that trend continues:
EDWI
WDLA
The rumored Texas noms
The Indiana noms
As a long shot wild card – late last year, Deb Fischer launched an application process for the open seat in Nebraska. Applications were due in December 2022… so maybe we’ll see another surprise red state nom come through.
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@Keystone
Thanks for the info on Nebraska. I hadn’t heard anything regarding the vacancy. I definitely agree with you on the other red state vacancies you mentioned most likely getting filled. Perhaps North Carolina & Kansas too. I still have hope another one or two Florida seats could get nominees.
The wild card will be Tennessee. Biden should shove Stephen Ross Johnson, Maha Ayesh or another A+ nominee down Blackburn’s throat unless her & Haggerty want to deal to include the district court vacancy.
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There’s one more possible hearing slot before Congress leaves town for the year, on 12/13. Any new nominees that would be eligible for that hearing would need to be in by 11/15, so I’d expect at least one more batch.
Beyond that, it depends on what the 2024 calendar will look like. Congress will most likely reconvene for the start of the 2nd session on 1/3, which happens to be a Wednesday. Not sure if there will be committee hearings (or even a business meeting the day after), since I believe that any unconfirmed nominees would expire and need to be re-nominated by the President. If there would be a hearing that day, the President would need to submit them to the Senate the first thing in the morning lol. Any re-nominations that would have to clear committee again would probably be held over on 1/4, setting up a re-vote out of committee on 1/11.
Again, a lot of it depends on what the January 2024 calendar looks like, which we probably won’t know until the holidays. There could be a possible hearing on 1/10, in which those nominees would need to be announced by 12/13. Beyond that, they will most definitely be out the week of the 15th, which is MLK Day. There’s also a possibility that the Senate convenes on 1/3, and doesn’t come back until the week after MLK week, which I believe happened this year. I’m hoping that’s not the case since they don’t need to re-organize or get committees setup like earlier this year so I’m hoping they’re in the week of 1/8. In that event, you could have a 1/24 hearing with a 12/27 deadline for nominees.
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I hate to harp on the fact that we don’t have a nominee for the vacant circuit court seats, but why do I have the sneaky feeling that we may get the 6th circuit nominee before the 3rd or 4th’s nominee? Not that I expect the nominee for the state of Tennessee to be more liberal than the circuit court seats in New Jersey and Maryland, but there may be someone Biden has in mind for the 6th that he’d put more effort into confirming than to overstep into Dem senator’s region. I’m happy to be wrong, but if they agreed on nominees for the 7th and 10th circuits before the liberal-leaning 3rd and 4th, the 6th circuit may follow that pattern.
Shame on Ben Cardin, just retire now. Almost any liberal judge will do. Do NOT continue to play games which could result in a FedSoc hack hearing cases on the 4th circuit for the next 40 years.
Regarding the 3rd circuit vacancy, the giant corrupt foreign-asset-in-the-senate elephant in the room may make that impossible. If Menendez used his influence as senior senator and home-state senator to get the NJ USA to not pursue any investigations into him, who knows what he might ask of any potential nominee to a powerful appellate court.
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Dear senator Schumer,
December 6th is on a Wednesday. Please schedule all tough judicial nominees votes on this day. Please & than you… Lol
(https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/03/politics/fourth-republican-primary-debate/index.html)
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That is assuming that Scott even qualifies for that debate, which he very well may not.
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That’s true. I’m hoping with Pence dropping out that some of his support will go to Tim Scott. Plus he has the 8th richest person backing him financially so I think he will be able to make the stage.
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I did a little more research on Melissa Damian. While she was an AUSA, she worked in the National Security Division of the office. In 2009, she successfully prosecuted two defendants for illegally selling military aircraft parts to Iran. The Justice Department issued a press release on the case.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/defendant-sentenced-conspiracy-export-military-aircraft-parts-iran
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Matthew Maddox already received his commission after being confirmed this past Tues
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Did everybody forget Vermont has a vacancy? It totally slipped my mind. I would hope Bernie recommends a solid progressive. Perhaps a union attorney but certainly I would hope a solid progressive on the younger side. Perhaps a person of color.
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Considering Sanders’ political positions, and the fact that Welch was a public defender, which is something he mentions frequently in SJC hearings, I don’t see why they wouldn’t recommend a strong progressive, especially if they were a public defender.
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My thoughts exactly @CJ. I’m much more hopefully with this combo then with junior senator Sanders & senior senator Leahy. I’m pretty excited about this vacancy I had forgotten all about until tonight.
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The noms I’m most interested in seeing are the ones for the two Arizona seats. We don’t really have much insight into the Arizona senators’ process and Sinema can be a wildcard. However, Roopali Desai was such a stellar pick for the circuit court seat that it gives me some hope we’ll see some great picks. Fingers crossed.
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And a lot of Republicans voted for Desai. I think she even cleared the SJC in a week with a voice vote. That was likely as a favor to Sinema for her not agreeing to filibuster for the voting rights act.
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Considering he is on the judiciary committee, I would expect Welch to take the lead on filling this seat, with Sanders and Biden affirming whomever Welch wants to select.
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Every state is different. New York has Schumer get about 3 picks for every 1 for Gillibrand plus he seems to soley pick the circuit court picks. California has two separate committees (I hope that is coming to an end however) & each senator gets an equal number of picks.
Some states have the senior senator with an outsized role in picking. New Jersey has the senators go to a nursing home or Republican committee office & choose whoever had a law license… Lol
So it will depend on the way Vermont has their set up. There are so few judicial picks in the state that I am not sure how they do it. But with Welch replacing Leahy, I have much more confidence in whoever will eventually be recommended.
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Looking at the “selection process” on the current Vermont judge’s questionnaires, it seems like Leahy (who was also on the Judiciary committee) pretty much ran the entire process.
It’s weird, none of the judges mention interviewing with Sanders or his staff. It sounds like he’s pretty hands off when it comes to judges.
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Leahy was also the senior senator at the time all current Vermont judges were nominated. So we do not know if the selection process is to run through which ever senator is on the SJC (Which there is no guarantee of) or to go through the senior senator. My guess is it is the latter not the former.
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The talk of the Federal District of Vermont reminded me that it’s already a quite liberal court, which makes me wonder, which Federal District Court do you guys think is the most liberal in the nation? I was personally thinking the District of Vermont or the Northern District of California.
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I think the most liberal district court in the country is the Northern District of California. All Obama & Biden judges. My second pick would be the Western District if Washington state. For third, I might go with the DC District court. I’ll change my answer this time next year & out Hawaii as my third place however once Biden’s two stellar nominees are confirmed & commissioned, including one of the two replacing a Republican appointee.
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I live in the Northern District Of California which has courts in San Jose , Oakland and San Fransisco.
I don’t see or hear of anything “liberal” coming from any of those locations.
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@shawnee68
I was more talking about the backgrounds of the individual judges, not their rulings. Many of the court judges are Biden appointees so we don’t have many rulings to look at yet.
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The Biden appointees are from the same lot as Obama’s. The 9th Circuit isn’t far left anymore so judges have to tailor their rulings to avoid reversal by the 9th Circuit.
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The Biden judges on the 9th circuit are not from the same cloth as Obama’s. Jennifer Sung, Holly A. Thomas, Roopali Desai & even Ana de Alba are all more progressive than any of Obama 9th circuit judges. The reason the 9th circuit isn’t as left anymore as it was, is because Trump got to put ten judges on the court. And on more than one occasion his judge was replacing a liberal lion.
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@shawnee68, I would say that Biden’s nominees are a bit to the left of Obama’s nominees, considering how much more passionate the liberal dissents the Biden nominees have compared to The Obama nominees. Also I’ve seen cases where a Clinton and Biden judge were in majority and an Obama judge was in dissent, and cases where an Obama judge and a GOP nominee judge in majority, with a Biden judge in dissent.
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I meant the district judges. You use the term “progressive” but that has an unclear meaning.
I don’t think someone’s professional background reflects how they will rule on a broad assortment of cases.
There are so many instances of Bush 2 judges joining Obama judges and vice versa on the 9th Circuit.
It’s very difficult to understand the reasons for this with the number of judges and types of cases.
The RBG on DC Circuit was much different than one who joined the Supreme Court. I think she was freer to create her own path than as a circuit judge following precedent.
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I agree with you and Dequan that Biden’s circuit judges appear to be more “left.” I don’t know how much that difference would make in mixed panels.
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Agree with you here as it pertains to the district court judges. It isn’t surprising when you consider who the senators have been in CA since Biden has been in office, seeing as that has been where most of them have come from so far. Other states have been pretty much stayed the status quo as well (for example ID and NV). For the circuit court, the Biden judges seem somewhat to the ‘left’ of Obama, which is probably mostly due to the lack of blue slips and a filibuster for those nominees under Biden.
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I think Biden is doing good job. The last tranche of judicial vacancies will be more difficult and released slower. It can’t be easy to negotiate with the likes of Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
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@shawnee68
So true… On another note, I hope Schumer sends cloture motions to the desk Monday for the remaining district court nominees that might get full Republican opposition. With the debate Wednesday night (I’m assuming Tim Scott will qualify), there’s no reason to mess around. This may possibly be the last debate Scott qualifies for.
I’m thinking he should send cloture motions for Charnelle Bjelkengren, Marian Gaston & maybe Kato Crews. Wednesday is not time to be confirming the Secretary of Baking Cookies or any other position I’ve never heard of & isn’t lifetime.
I’m assuming Republicans on the SJC were afraid Schumer might call up Eumi K. Lee and/or Mustafa T. Kasubhai for a vote Wednesday. That’s probably why they fought to the death to stall the committee vote to get them sent to the floor for two weeks now.
Sarah F. Russell seems to be the only other pending nominee that will probably have complete opposition. I’m hoping that will change as we get more blue state nominees.
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Don’t forget DeAlba. I have a feeling she’ll be first up for additional cloture motions.
Do you think Monica Ramirez Almadani will have an easy confirmation? I was expecting her to be really controversial, but Graham (to my surprise) voted for her in committee.
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de Alba would be nice this week just so Biden can finally send Sherriff’s nomination to the senate & perhaps he could be included in the SJC next week if they don’t skip a slot. Of course it’s stupid they are even waiting to send the nomination to the senate until de Alba is confirmed, but at least vote on her cloture Thursday & confirmation Monday. That should be enough time to send the nomination to the senate.
Ramirez Almadani was a huge surprise to me. I figured she would have a rough hearing, but it went smooth.
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Most likely cloture motions will be filed for Wednesday tomorrow, most likely the vote schedule through Wednesday morning would be:
5:30PM Monday: Cloture on Bertagnolli (NIH Director)
11:30AM Tuesday: Confirm Bertagnolli, cloture on judge #1
2:30PM Tuesday: Confirm Judge #1, cloture on Judge #2
4:30PM Confirm Judge #2, Cloture on Judge #3
Judge #3 will most likely be confirmed on Wednesday morning, so more cloture motions would need to be sent tomorrow to fill out the rest of the Wednesday schedule.
At that point, if you want to dedicate the week to confirming the party-line judges, you’d have three of Edelman, Gaston, Crews, AliKhan, Bjelkengren, and Mehalchick for Wednesday. If you have another six votes setup for Wednesday, the first vote would be to confirm whichever is the third judge of the current batch up, and then five votes for cloture/confirmation on three more judges (confirming two and cloture on three).
I think in that format, if you file cloture on de Alba, you COULD have four votes on Thursday (confirm the last judge from Wednesday at 11:30AM, have a second vote for cloture on another district judge, and then confirmation of that judge at 1:45PM, and then cloture on de Alba to wrap up Thursday). If you do that, you COULD have two votes for Monday 11/13, which they have done on occasion (confirm de Alba and then cloture on another nominee).
If there’s any specific district judge I’d want confirmed this week for a stupid reason, I’d say Edelman just so the first page of the executive calendar will be wiped clean of judicial nominees, lol.
I feel like if they were going to do more appropriations or Israel/Ukraine aid this week, we would have known by now, no?
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@tsb1991
Unfortunately the two votes on Monday booking is all but dead by this senate. Don’t ask me why because any answer would be completely stupid. Just giving the reality that we probably have a better chance of Clarence Thomas announcing he is going to retire on Monday then we do two votes by this senate.
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One can dream, if the Senate week somehow carried out as I posted, that’d definitely make up for a lot of the dead September/October time.
Outside of the surprise cloture motions on the nominees who currently have the longest waiting time for confirmation, the only slight disappointment from Thursday was that we didn’t get a voice vote on Kazen (SDTX), it would have been consistent with Brailsford and Brookman getting voice votes a week after being voice voted out of committee.
Also, with the end of the year coming up, do we get judge-o-rama 2023 like we did in 2021? If there’s any agreement on that it’ll probably only be the low hanging fruit nominees (as in your Graham+Collins+Murkowski supports them at a minimum), since I’m sure Republicans want to make it as difficult as possible to confirm any party-line nominees (although Holly Thomas, who needed a discharge, as you mention, did get cloture invoked before the end of 2021 and was agreed to allow a straight-up confirmation vote after being renominated at the beginning of 2022). Also, if there is any kind of nominee-o-rama, it might also include non-judicial nominees, since there’s seemingly a blanket hold on every department right now (Vance on DOJ, Rand Paul and probably someone else on State, and outside of Tuberville, doesn’t Hawley have a hold on Pentagon nominees due to Afghanistan?).
My life is so pathetic that I’m excited to tune into C-SPAN tonight and throughout the day tomorrow like it’s a slate of football games or something, lol.
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Interesting fact about the District of Vermont.
Whomever is confirmed to replace Judge Crawford will be eligible to become chief judge almost right away, as Judge Reiss has already served as it and is ineligible to do so again I believe.
Not that it matters as much in a small district like that.
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So usually what happens in these scenarios is that once Crawford goes senior, Reiss will become Chief again. In all likelihood, once Crawford’s replacement has been servicing for a year, he or she will become the Chief.
They usually don’t throw the additional admin responsibilities to newbie judges until they’ve been on the bench for at least a year. At least that’s how I have seen it done in other small district courts.
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Makes sense, someone new coming on board would dealing with a lot if he or she had to become chief judge right away.
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@Michael John Schaeffer
I just got 23 posts from past write up’s, so I guess Harsh had them in a queue somewhere & just released them. Anyway I saw on one of them you asked me a question so I’ll answer it here. I’ll just list each circuit with the names I would like to see regardless of vacancies or not. I would likely give an A+ to all of the following…
What other names do you wish had been nominated for a federal judgeship besides Karla Gillbride?
DC:
Deepak Gupta, Roscoe Jones Jr., Elizabeth Prelogar
1st:
Andrew Manuel Crespo, Bessie Dewar, Gilles Bissonnette, Kevin Prussia, Talesha Saint-Marc, Bethany Wong
2nd:
Justin Driver, Joshua Perry, Dale Ho (2nd or circuit court), Melissa Murray, Samuel Spital, Joshua Matz, Ria Tabacco Mar, Ava Ayers, Eleanor “Ella” Spottswood
3rd:
Rachel Wainer Apter, Jeremy Feigenbaum, Alexis Karterton, Sandra Mayson, Nilam Sanghvi, Christopher Howland, Farrin Anello, Ryan Haygood, Jasmine Harris, Susan M. Lin
4th:
Christopher Brook, Ryan Park, Allison Riggs, Ajmel Quereshi, Juval Scott
5th:
Rochelle Mercedes Garza, Amparo Monique Guerra, Lee Merritt, Diana Song Quiroga, Angel Harris, Mercedes Montagnes
6th:
Leah Litman, Stephen Ross Johnson, Tricia Herzfeld, Laura Landewich, Michael Carter, Luttrell Levingston, Philip Mayor
7th:
John Rappaport, Kate A. Shaw, Johanes Maliza, Karen Sheley, Mario García, Nico Martinez
8th:
Breean Walas, Jeffrey Justman, Liliana Zaragoza, Mohammed Ahmed
9th: Way too many to name
10th:
Jason C. Murray, Lauren Bonds, Shammara Henderson
11th:
Merritt McAlister, Fred O. Smith Jr., Lauren Sudeall, Efrén Olivares, Sean J. Young
That’s not my entire list of A+ that haven’t been nominated, but most of the names I could think of in conjunction with @Ethan’s list.
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Any particular names on the 9th that you can recommend?
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@Michael John Schaeffer
There are so many but I’ll name my top picks for California. All would get an A+ from me.
Araceli Martinez-Olguin – I am usually not a fan of elevating district court judges because then we have to spend SJC & senate floor time backfilling them. This is one of the exceptions I would be fine with it.
Monica Ramirez-Almadani – I was hoping she was the nominee for the seat de Alba got.
Jessica Bansal
Lucero Chavez Basilio
Jamie Crook
Kate Desormeau
Mitra Ebadolahi
Victor A. Rodriguez
Bryant Yang
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While I would like Biden to pick up the pace a bit with nominees (especially with the circuit courts), he really deserves a lot of credit for the caliber of nominees.
We have a lot of polling out there today showing the difficulties Biden is running into and the lack of enthusiasm, especially amongst younger and black voters. His age is of course an issue, and not everyone is going to agree with him on every issue. I wish we had another Dem running, but you play the cards you’re dealt.
Nixon said it best, presidents come and go, but judges are forever… We all have an obligation, as readers of this blog, to constantly remind our family and friends, any voters really, of the importance of federal judges!
We all saw some of the awful judges we got during the Trump years. We all are happy to fill seats in TX and other red states with moderate nominees rather than another Fed Society hack who is in their 30s.
Let’s not lose sight of the importance of another Biden term (and Dem Senate) in creating a vision of the courts that is important to us all! Your vote matters! [End of rant]
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This is my first time responding on vetting room. However I have very much enjoyed the comment sections so far. I’d like to respond to the critiscm of Judge Koh nomination, that has continued even recently. Judge Koh has being a reliable progressive vote on en banc polls and decisions unlike A+ Judge Holly Thomas.
Furthermore, Judge Koh’s opinions and memoranda dispositions very heavily spell out a progressive ideology. In comparison Judge Holly Thomas has sparked a dissent in a immigration case from Judge Forrest. When she denied a petition for review, that Judge Forrest pointed out clearly should of being allowed. She has also reguraly joined Trump Judges in opinions that I heavily suspect would of sparked dissents from the progressive bloc. She did also receive a dissent from Judge Humetewa regarding I believe meal breaks and premeption. So I am unsure why there are still critics of Judge Koh. I’d also suggest that maybe there should be some deference for nominations with similiar to Judge Koh. As I suspect that when interviewing and doing that deep research they are examining for ideological hints. Also that before people continue their cristiscm, they examine how the person actually is on the bench. I am sorry about the poor grammar and spelling, I have had to rewrite this 3 times due to issues posting.
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