Federal Judiciary

Federal Judiciary

Problems Plague the Courts

The 1990s was plagued by partisan fighting over the federal judiciary. In 1991 controversy arose over the confirmation of a U.S. Supreme Court justice who was accused of sexual harassment. By mid decade, as the political composition of the Congress moved increasingly to the right and tension between it and the White House heightened, scores of federal inferior court seats were left unfilled as the president and Republican senators fought over nominations.

The Supreme Court

During the 1990s there were four appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. President George Bush appointed two associate justices. David Hackett Souter took office on 9 October 1990, filling the vacancy created by the retirement of the politically moderate Justice William Joseph Brennan Jr. On 23 October 1991 Clarence Thomas replaced renowned liberal justice Thurgood Marshall. President Bill Clinton also made two appointments. Ruth Bader Ginsburg took office on 10 August 1993, following the retirement of President John F. Kennedy appointee Justice Byron R. White, the only Democrat left on the Court at the time. On 3 August 1994 Stephen Gerald Breyer filled the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Harry Andrew Blackmun, who had been appointed by President Richard M. Nixon.

The Rehnquist Court

While Clinton filled two seats with Democrats, the conservative appointees of Republican presidents from Nixon to Bush composed a clear majority on the Supreme Court. This was publicly noted by Justice Blackmun, who, several years before his retirement, declared that the Court was "moving to the right… where it wants to go, by hook or crook." With its conservative majority, led by Nixon appointee Chief Justice William Hubbs Rehnquist, Supreme Court decisions have shown a trend toward eliminating the liberal decisions of the Earl Warren Court (1953-1969) and the moderate decisions of the Warren Earl Burger (1969—1986) Court. The Rehnquist Court chipped away at affirmative action and abortion rights. Moreover, it no longer saw itself as the chief protector of individual and minority rights and liberties. Rather, decisions tended to defer to the federal and state governments.

Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill

With the retirement of Marshall in 1991, President Bush nominated a black, conservative federal appeals court judge to fill the position. Bush claimed that he was not employing quotas in his nomination of Clarence Thomas. While not everyone believed him, Senate liberals were placed in a difficult position. They favored another minority serving on the High Court, but realized that Thomas was not the liberal jurist that Marshall had been. The Senate Judiciary Committee sent Thomas's nomination to the Senate floor with a split vote. Just as the full Senate was about to vote on the nomination, charges of sexual harassment were leveled against Thomas. The committee hearings were reopened. University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill testified before the all-male committee. Before the television cameras, she described in graphic detail Thomas's alleged behavior. Thomas denied all the charges and then accused the Senate of racism for reviewing the issue. In a fifty-two to forty-eight decision, the smallest margin in more than a century, the Senate confirmed Thomas. Women's groups severely criticized the Senate for failing to take Hill's testimony seriously.

Gridlock in Lower Court Confirmations

While President Clinton was able to achieve a large percentage of judicial nominee confirmation in the first years of his administration—129 by 1994—partisan politics marred the selection process in the latter half of the decade. The Republican-controlled Senate slowed the process to a near standstill, leaving the courts severely backlogged and delaying justice. By the end of 1997 the tension between the White House and Senate Judiciary Committee was so severe that Chief Justice Rehnquist warned that if the high number of vacancies persisted, it would erode "the quality of justice that traditionally has been associated with the federal judiciary." Between 1996 and 1997 the Senate confirmed only fifty-six judges, barely more than the fifty-four judges confirmed on the average annually since 1979. In 1997 Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Grant Hatch (R-Utah) allowed only nine confirmation hearings. The tone of many of the hearings was highly partisan. Rather than focusing on the integrity, professional competence, and temperament of nominees, the hearings centered on whether they were judicial activists and liberals. During the first session of the 105th Congress, there were several proposals, including a constitutional amendment, to limit the terms of federal judges, thereby eliminating life tenure and the constitutional protection for judicial independence. Other measures proposed holding elections for federal judges. House Majority Whip Thomas Dale DeLay (R-Texas) even advocated impeaching federal judges based on their opinions. At one point during 1997 there were more than one hundred judicial vacancies, more than one-third of which were official "judicial emergencies," meaning that the seats had been vacant for more than eighteen months. The Clinton administration, however, did little to stop the attempt by the Senate majority to undermine presidential appointment power. Clinton provided minimal support for his nominees under fire. The stalemate continued throughout the remainder of the decade. By the end of 1999 twenty-four Appellate Court and thirty-two District Court seats were unfilled; fifteen were in a state of judicial emergency, while some had been vacant since 1994.

Composition

At the close of the decade there were 787 active District and Circuit Court judges. Eighty-three and a half percent (657) were white; 10.2 percent (80) were black; 5.1 percent (40) were Hispanic. Seven jurists were Asian Americans, two were Native American, and one was Arab American. Eighty percent (628) of federal judges were male and 20 percent (159) were women. Only nineteen black women served in federal judgeships. On the U.S. Supreme Court, there were six white men, one black man, and two white women. More than 60 percent of the women and 70 percent of the blacks sitting on the federal judiciary at the end of 1999 were Clinton appointees.

Earnings

All federal judges receive salaries that are set by Congress. In 1998 the Chief Justice of the United States was paid $175,400. Associate Supreme Court Justices earned $167,900. Court of Appeals judges earned $145,000, while U.S. District Court judges received $136,700. Full-time Magistrate and Bankruptcy judges made $125,764, while the salaries of part-time Magistrate judges ranged from $3,167 to $58,065.

Technology and the Courts

An increasing amount of information about the federal and state courts, cases, and decisions became available to the public through technological means, such as the Internet. The television network Court TV gave Americans an inside look at courtroom proceedings. In addition, almost all federal and many state courts installed automated systems that allow for the search and retrieval of case-related information through personal computers and through a dial-in service called PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records). These technological advances allowed the public to gain direct, rapid, and easy access to official court information and records.

Sources:

1997 Report on the Judiciary (Washington, D.C.: Alliance for justice, 1998).

George C. Edwards III, Martin P. Wattenberg, and Robert L. Lineberry, Government in America: People, Politics, and Policy (New York: Harper-Collins, 1996).

Judicial Selection Project (Washington, D.C.: Alliance for Justice, 1999).