Even while acknowledging politics are always at play, it’s still hard to fathom what the holdup is in the U.S. Senate when it comes to action on federal judicial candidates, particularly those relatively non-controversial district court appointments.
Among those caught in a backlog is Colorado’s William Joseph Martinez, who has been waiting for months to get a vote on his candidacy.
The Senate, which is about to go on a month-long break, needs to move along his appointment and others.
Martinez got a unanimous qualified rating from the American Bar Association, and has a long history of public service and experience.
His nomination has been pending since February, and while it languishes, Colorado’s district court labors to keep up with its caseload.
Two of Colorado’s seven Article III federal judge slots are vacant, and the Administrative Office of the Courts has deemed the situation a “judicial emergency.”
Article III judges are those who are appointed by the president and hold the position for life. They also, along with magistrate judges, are the workhorses who run the federal trial courts.
Colorado’s two vacancies, which came about as a result of the resignation of Edward Nottingham and the death of Phillip Figa, leave the court very shorthanded.
The need is clear, and Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet have urged the Senate to take up Martinez’s nomination. However, it seems these days even the simplest of tasks in Washington, D.C., is embroiled in partisan wrangling.
Martinez, whose nomination was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in April, is among 26 judges whose nominations are pending in the Senate.
The Senate’s job is to look at whether the president’s choice is qualified. The “advise and consent” language in the Constitution does not give the Senate leeway to apply litmus tests on various political and social issues.
In looking at Martinez’s resume and affiliations, we suspect his views on certain issues might be more liberal than ours. Martinez served on a legal panel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado since 2006, where he and others reviewed memos on proposed litigation and voted how to proceed.
The details on those deliberations were not disclosed as a matter of attorney-client privilege.
He is a member of Amnesty International, Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club.
But in response to written questions, Martinez repeatedly stressed his fidelity to the law and legal precedents.
We take him at his word, but even if we didn’t, district court judges work with the knowledge that their decisions frequently are subject to review by federal appeals court judges who decide whether district court judges have followed the law.
We understand how Martinez’s background might get under the skin of conservatives such as Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. But as we’ve said before, presidential elections have consequences and one of those is that the winner has the power to appoint federal judges.
Senate Republicans need to allow for an up-or-down vote on Martinez and others so our federal courts can continue to mete out justice.
