"Six" Nominated to the 10th Circuit

President Obama nominates Former Kansas Attorney General Steve Six to a seat on the 10th Circuit vacated by new Pepperdine Law Dean, Deanell Tacha.

Judge Tacha is New Dean at Pepperdine

. . . and the 10th Circuit now has two vacancies.

"Cold War" Stalling Judicial Nominations

The landscape's getting worse.

Judicial Vacancies

Carl Tobias on filling the vacancies on the 10th Circuit.

Stay on the Court, Justice Stevens

Senator Specter urges Justice Stevens to stay on the Court for the remainder of this term because he feels that the Senate will not be able to confirm a replacement this year. Washington Post

Obama Will Nominate Berkeley Law Professor to 9th Circuit

From the L.A. Times:

President Obama will nominate UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday. . . .

Liu carries credentials that some conservatives love to hate -- including a leadership position in a progressive legal group and a record of opposing the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

But he has conservative admirers too. Liu has supported school choice as a solution to problems in urban education, and has served as faculty advisor to the California College Preparatory Academy, a public charter school. He came to the White House's attention with the recommendation of some conservatives.

If confirmed, he could be the only full-time Asian American judge on a federal appellate court. A senior administration official revealed his nomination on condition of anonymity.

I'm sure Fed Courts professors everywhere are ecstatic.

Explaining the Lag in Filling Federal Judgeships

The Obama administration's pace in filling the many federal court vacancies has been quite slow. As we observed back in early October, President Obama has appointed considerably fewer judges than President Bush did during his first year and--more significantly--has had much less success in the confirmation process than his predecessor. While President Bush got fifty-three nominees confirmed in his first year, only four of the twenty-four lower federal judges appointed by President Obama have been confirmed with the new year just around the corner.

What, exactly, explains this perplexing phenomenon to which mainstream media outlets are only recently starting to pay attention?

Clerkship Series: Day 2 -- Landing a Federal Clerkship in October

In our Day 1 posting of the clerkship series, Nima conveyed NYU Law Assistant Dean Deborah Ellis' encouraging words that all is not lost for securing a clerkship this hiring season. As Dean Ellis noted, "[t]here are many judges who have not hired, especially at the trial . . . and state level[s]." While it is difficult to gauge how much hiring activity will really transpire over the course of the next few weeks, at least some hiring is on the horizon—many of President Obama's pending judicial nominees will be getting confirmed, and additional nominations are likely imminent. Indeed, as Jeffrey Toobin pointed out in The New Yorker:

Obama already has the chance to nominate judges for twenty-one seats on the federal appellate bench—more than ten per cent of the hundred and seventy-nine judges on those courts. At least half a dozen more seats should open in the next few months. . . . On the federal district courts, there are seventy-two vacancies, also about ten per cent of the total . . . .

That's a lot of new judges who will need law clerks. And although the pace of confirmations has been anything but speedy (only three judges so far, cf. President Bush's fifty-three confirmations during the first year of his Presidency), the Senate sent four nominees to the full Senate for a vote just this past week: Joseph Greenaway (nominated for 3d Cir.), Roberto Lange (nominated for D.S.D.), Irene Cornelia Berger (nominated for S.D. W. Va.) and Charlene Edwards Honeywell (nominated for M.D. Fla.).

So polish off your applications, and get ready to land a federal clerkship in October...or beyond.