With the confirmations Monday and yesterday of Michael Scudder (CA7), Amy St. Eve (CA7), John Nalbandian (CA6), and Joel Carson (CA10), President Trump has now had nine federal appellate nominees confirmed this year and a grand total of twenty-one over his first sixteen months in office. By contrast, here are the totals for recent presidents from their inauguration to May 15 of their second year in office:
Obama—9
GW Bush—9
Clinton—8
GHW Bush—13
Reagan—13
Carter—10
There is now one federal appellate nomination pending on the Senate floor: Mark Bennett (CA9/HI). There are two appellate nominees waiting to be reported out by the Senate Judiciary Committee: Andrew Oldham (CA5/TX) and Ryan Bounds (CA9/OR). There are seven nominees awaiting a committee hearing: Britt Grant (CA11/GA), Paul Matey (CA3/NJ), David Porter (CA3/PA), Marvin Quattelbaum (CA4/SC), Julius Richardson (CA4/SC), Richard Sullivan (CA2/NY), and Ryan Nelson (CA9/ID) (whose nomination was just announced and might not yet have reached the Senate).
On top of these ten pending nominations, there are eleven additional appellate vacancies (seven “current” and four declared “future”):
2 CA2/NY
2 CA6/OH
1 CA5/MS
1 CA8/SD
5 CA9: 3 in CA, 1 each in AZ and WA
Additional appellate vacancies in the near future are most likely to arise from decisions by sitting judges to retire or take senior status. On the premise that a judge is most likely to retire or take senior status when the president is of the same party as the president who appointed the judge, I list here the thirty Republican-appointed federal appellate judges who are currently eligible to retire or, in those instances in which I include dates, will soon be:
CA1/PR: Torruella
CA2/NY: Jacobs
CA2/VT: Hall
CA3/PA: Smith
CA4/MD: Niemeyer
CA4/NC: Duncan (Aug. 2018)
CA4/VA: Wilkinson
CA5/MS: Southwick (Feb. 2019)
CA5/TX: Jones
CA5/TX: Smith
CA6/MI: Griffin (Apr. 2019)
CA6/TN: Gibbons
CA7/IL: Easterbrook
CA7/IL: Flaum
CA7/IL: Rovner
CA7/IN: Kanne
CA8/AR: Shepherd (Oct. 2019)
CA8/MN: Loken
CA8/MO: Benton
CA9/CA: Bea
CA9/CA: Callahan
CA9/CA: M. Smith
CA9/NV: Bybee (Oct. 2018)
CA10/NM: Hartz
CA11/AL: E. Carnes
CA11/FL: Tjoflat
CADC: Henderson
CAFedCir: Lourie, Newman, and Prost
I emphasize that by listing these names I do not mean to suggest that any particular individual should retire.
(I may well have made some mistakes in this post. I welcome any corrections.)