On April 2, President Obama nominated federal district judge Andre M. Davis to a vacancy on the Fourth Circuit that has been open since 2000 (and to which President Clinton had nominated Davis in mid-October 2000, far too late to have any reasonable basis to expect action on the nomination). Despite the fact that Davis has more than 14 years of district-court rulings for committee staffers to review, Judiciary Committee chairman Leahy has scheduled a hearing on Davis’s nomination for next Wednesday, April 29—less than four weeks after his nomination.
To put this rush in context: During the Bush 43 administration, the average time from nomination to hearing for federal appellate nominees was 166 days overall, and 197 days while Leahy was chairman.
At that same proceeding on April 29, the Judiciary Committee will conduct its second review (after the sham first) of David F. Hamilton’s nomination to the Seventh Circuit and its review of the nomination of Thomas E. Perez to be AAG for the Civil Rights Division. This review of Hamilton comes only 43 days after his nomination, despite the fact that Hamilton has authored more than 1200 opinions in nearly 15 years as a federal district judge and submitted approximately 2,000 pages of speeches and articles.