Conservative Coalition Calls on GOP Senate Leadership to Vote on Judicial Nominees

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, WASHINGTON, DC— The American Conservative Union, the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots conservative lobbying organization, today joined a coalition of 40 conservative organizations calling on the Republican senate leadership to move forward on all pending judicial nominations.

“ACU enthusiastically endorses strict constructionists, like John Roberts and Samuel Alito,” said David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. “It is high time that the senate take action on judges of similar merit and talent, whose nominations have been languishing in that chamber unreasonably.”

The circuit courts today are 10 percent vacant. The case of Jim Haynes is representative. As general counsel of the Department of Defense, Haynes was nominated to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Richmond, VA) on September 29, 2003. Three weeks later, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved him. Yet—more than two and a half years later—Haynes remains in limbo. The reason: by way of the filibuster, senate Democrats have prevented a simple up-or-down vote.

“This is not democracy,” said Keene. “This is an archaic, anti-democratic stratagem.”