What happens to judicial nominees who never get a vote? Some take a big financial hit
Congress has entered its summer recess without acting on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, along with 49 others nominated to lower federal courts.
Will they get a vote? Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution who tracks nominations, expects the number will be “pretty paltry” because of the political fighting this year, Law.com (sub. req.) reports. For some of those nominees—especially small-firm lawyers—the consequences can have financial consequences that last for years.
Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland tied the record Tuesday for the longest wait for a Supreme Court confirmation vote, the Huffington Post reports.
Among the other pending nominees, 34 are government employees, including prosecutors, state court judges and federal magistrate judges. Two are law professors. Thirteen work in law firms of differing sizes, including large firms Hogan Lovells and Perkins Coie.
One solo lawyer whose nomination fell by the wayside several years ago was Richard Honaker of Rock Springs, Wyoming. He tells Law.com that he turned down new cases and wound down cases as his nomination was pending. The first two years afterward, he earned about a quarter of his usual income. His practice didn’t return to normal levels for five years.
“It turned out to be a very major financial sacrifice to volunteer for public service,” he observed.
Election law expert Fredric Woocher, a partner at Strumwasser & Woocher in Los Angeles, says he stayed away from politically sensitive cases in 2000 as his nomination was pending. One of them was Bush v. Gore.
“I was probably one of three or four people in the country who knew what a hanging chad was … and then the scenario and the case of a lifetime comes up,” Woocher told Law.com. “It was very frustrating, needless to say.”
The article includes statistics on pending judicial nominations in the summer recess at the end of two other presidencies. In 2000, 38 of President Bill Clinton’s federal judicial nominees were pending at the start of the recess. In 2008, 37 of President George W. Bush’s nominees were pending. Both presidents made additional nominations after the summer recess. Forty-two of Clinton’s nominees were returned without a vote, and 30 of Bush’s nominees didn’t get a vote.
