1. For the 17 district-court nominations on which cloture votes will take place beginning this afternoon, the average time since nomination is roughly seven months—somewhere in the ballpark of 210 days. Five of these nominations were made only in November 2011, and three others in September 2011. On the other end, one nomination was made in March 2011 and two in May 2011, so only three have been pending for 300 days or more.

2. For contrast, here is a list of Bush 43 district-court nominees who (with the exception of the one nominee noted below who received one negative vote) were confirmed unanimously or by voice vote after delays of 300 days or more.

Thomas Ludington 1,365 days James C. Dever III 1,072 days Peter Sheridan 946 days Robert J. Conrad, Jr. 731 days Sean F. Cox 636 days Thomas D. Schroeder 441 days Roslynn R. Mauskopf 428 days Vanessa L. Bryant 427 days Dora L. Irizarry 423 days Sandra Feuerstein 419 days Roger T. Benitez 413 days (98-1) Richard Holwell 412 days James R. Hall 388 days Robert J. Jonker 376 days Paul L. Maloney 376 days Curtis V. Gomez 362 days William L. Osteen, Jr. 346 days Martin K. Reidinger 346 days Liam O’Grady 341 days Sandra Townes 307 days

Stanley R. Chesler (295 days), Ronald B. Leighton (295 days), and William J. Martini (295 days) barely fail to qualify for the list. As this previous post of mine (covering only 2007 and 2008) illustrates, the list would be much, much longer if I used a 210-day cut-off.

My total-days data for Bush 43 nominees confirmed from 2001 to 2006 is drawn from Appendix 5 to a Congressional Research Service Report titled “U.S. Circuit and District Court Nominations by President George W. Bush During the 107th-109th Congresses,” dated Jan. 23, 2007. (I’ve done Internet searches on these nominees, mostly on the Library of Congress’s Thomas website, for the confirmation votes.) My data for Bush 43 nominees confirmed during 2007 and 2008 is drawn from Tables 1 and 2 of a Congressional Research Service report titled “Nominations to Article III Lower Courts by President Bush During the 110th Congress,” dated May 6, 2009. (If I’ve made any errors in transcribing the data, please let me know.)