Senate Republicans move to restrict Clinton's judicial choices

WASHINGTON -- With nearly 100 judicial vacancies to fill as he begins his second term and the likelihood of many more to come, President Clinton has a remarkable opportunity to influence the federal courts well into the next century.

By the time he leaves office in four years, Clinton will have named more judges to the federal bench than any other president, several legal scholars predict.

Yet, because of the potential impact the appointments may have on a wide variety of highly charged issues, including term limits, abortion and racial preferences, Senate Republicans and a group of conservative advocacy groups are mobilizing to restrict Clinton in his judicial selections. The next several months seem likely to feature an intense political confrontation between the administration and the Republicans who control the Senate, which must approve Clinton's judicial selections. The Republicans are hoping to influence both the kind of people Clinton nominates and the number he is able to get confirmed. Senior White House officials have said that they intended to flood the Senate with nominees over the next few months, sending as many as 100 candidates for consideration. Senate Republicans have said in interviews that it will be impossible for them to evaluate that many candidates in so short a time. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, has vowed to be tough on Clinton judicial nominees. "He has said consistently that the Democrats should not just think all they have to do on judicial nominations is send up a bunch of names and expect the Republicans to just approve them," said Lott's spokeswoman, Susan Irby. "He very much intends to subject them to thorough scrutiny." Lott is reflecting a growing resolve among many Republicans, particularly a group of junior senators, to make it as difficult as possible for Clinton to have his way with the courts. Some conservative Republicans, led by Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and Slade Gorton of Washington, have formed a group to consider ways to increase their influence over the judicial selection process. Among the proposals they are discussing in their private meetings, senior aides said, is whether they could insist that the White House cede half the appointments to the Republican majority. The Senate Republicans are soon expected to confirm one of Clinton's longstanding choices to an important appeals court post, but with a condition attached. Republican senators say they will vote to confirm the nominee, Merrick Garland, a senior Justice Department official, to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, regarded by many as second in importance only to the Supreme Court. But in allowing Garland to become the circuit's 11th judge, they plan to declare that they will refuse to consider nominees for the court's other vacant slot. The plan is a bow to Sen. Charles E. Grassley, who has said that the courts already have enough judges and has embarked on a campaign to leave some seats unfilled. Grassley, R-Iowa, and a member of the judiciary committee, suggested that he would also oppose the administration's nomination of Judge James A. Beaty Jr. to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because, he said, that court already has enough judges. Beaty, who now sits as a lower-level trial judge on the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, would become the first black to sit on the circuit's appeals bench. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., who is the new ranking minority member of the judiciary committee, has said it is outrageous for Grassley and his fellow Republicans to slow down the filling of court seats or leave them vacant, a practice he said had resulted in enormous backlogs of cases. Leahy has signaled in recent judiciary committee meetings that he will press for quick confirmation of nominees, saying that the Republicans slowed down the confirmation process last year because a presidential election was coming and they wanted to preserve any vacancies in case they captured the White House. Last year, for the first time in this century, the Senate did not confirm any judges for the appeals courts, the level just below the Supreme Court, and only 17 district court judges were confirmed, a record Leahy has said is abysmal. "We are approaching a real crisis" in terms of the backlog of cases in the courts, he said. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said in a speech last month that the growing number of vacancies was slowing the administration of justice and placing a burden on the courts. The Administrative Office of the Courts, which runs the judicial branch, has released figures showing that delays in the hearing of cases had grown as judgeships remained unfilled. The backlog, or number of pending cases, on the civil docket has grown to 24,563 from 19,530 since the last time the number of judges was increased in 1990. By law, criminal cases must be heard more quickly, and the criminal docket has grown at a lesser pace, to 10,184 from 8,762. There are 93 vacancies among the nation's 846 federal judicial slots, and the number of openings grows by about four each month. Clinton's greatest opportunity to move his selections will be in the coming year; after that, much of the process falls prey to election-year politics, from both the Congressional midterm elections in 1998 and the presidential election in 2000. Throughout his first term, Clinton avoided choosing judicial candidates who might attract opposition. Most of his choices were generally moderate, to the consternation of liberal advocacy groups, which had hoped his appointments would be a counterweight to the efforts of Presidents Reagan and Bush to tilt the court in a conservative direction. In their 12 years in office, Reagan and Bush appointed a majority of the nation's judges. Several administration officials acknowledged that they did not expect Clinton to be bolder in his selections in his second term. The man in the middle of the fierce political crosswinds is Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, who is the judiciary committee chairman. Hatch has often said that he thinks the president should have the prerogative in most cases to select judicial candidates but that he will oppose any he thinks are "judicial activists." He has successfully persuaded the administration to withdraw several nominees, and in last year's presidential campaign he took a leading role in attacking Clinton's record on judicial selections. Nonetheless, Hatch has come under some criticism from his own party for not resisting more Clinton nominees. During a judiciary committee hearing last month, Hatch, in an unusual moment of candor, said that he felt he was being squeezed by both sides, with Republicans who "think we have been too lenient" and Democrats like Leahy who are pressing for quick action.

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