By Leslie Proll

When President Obama took office last January, hopes were high that the right wing’s long stronghold on the federal courts had come to an end. LDF and other civil rights advocates were eager for a new day when fair and impartial judges would once again be nominated and confirmed in large numbers.

Now, one year later, those hopes have dimmed as continued partisanship in the Senate and a number of high profile items competing on the domestic agenda have wreaked havoc on the new President’s judicial appointment process.

President Obama began his presidency with an extraordinary number of vacancies in the federal courts. To date, there are over one hundred vacancies on the appellate and district courts. Additionally, the Federal Judgeship Act of 2009 (S. 1653), which contains recommendations for new vacancies by the Judicial Conference of the United States, would create over 60 more vacancies.

Despite the vast number of openings, President Obama nominated only 33 persons to the appellate and district courts in his first year. In stark contrast, President George W. Bush had made 65 nominations by this time. Indeed, in his first year, President Bush nominated 29 persons just to the appellate courts, including several of his most ideological selections such as Terrence Boyle, Priscilla Owen and Charles Pickering.

It is commendable that President Obama sought to overcome the bitter partisanship that has plagued judicial nominations for decades now. But it quickly became clear that the olive-branch approach would not make a difference. The first Obama judicial nominee was David Hamilton, an Indiana moderate nominated to the Seventh Circuit with the blessing of his own Republican Senator, Richard Lugar, and the support of the local Federalist Society. Yet Hamilton’s nomination was stalled in the Senate for nine months. He was confirmed only after his opponents attempted to filibuster his nomination and failed; he received no Republican votes aside from Senator Lugar.

The overall confirmation statistics reflect the sobering reality that all Obama nominees are slow to be confirmed, regardless of their records. Although the Democrats control the Senate, they have confirmed only 13 of President Obama’s judicial nominations, including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. At the same time in President Bush’s tenure, a Democratic-led Senate had confirmed more than twice that number, or 28 nominations.

To be sure, the obstructionism in the Senate has encompassed more than judicial confirmations – in the past year, the Senate leadership has been forced to file 67 petitions to end debate on a host of issues. Still, the Obama Administration and the Senate should place judicial nominations at the top of their agenda in this new year to ensure as many confirmations to these lifetime positions as possible.

On the nominations themselves, the Obama Administration deserves praise for promoting diversity on the federal bench. Such efforts are long overdue. At the end of the Bush Administration, some circuit courts had the same degree of African-American representation as they did thirty or forty years ago. And one cannot forget the all-white slates of Bush nominees to district courts in the South, where the demographics would strongly suggest otherwise. More than half of the judicial nominations by President Obama have gone to minority candidates. These include some important firsts such as the first African American nominated to the First Circuit (O. Rogeriee Thompson), and the first African-American judge ever appointed in West Virginia (Irene Burger).

But racial and ethnic diversity is not enough. President Obama has discussed how judicial candidates should reflect diversity in professional background as well. One circuit worthy of this focus is the Fourth Circuit, widely known as the most conservative on civil rights. Throughout the Bush years, civil rights groups opposed nominations that threatened to move the court even further to the right. Now, President Obama has the unprecedented opportunity to fill one-third of the seats and essentially transform this court. But while his nominees so far reflect racial and gender diversity, all are sitting judges and none has a background in civil rights. Of all the circuits, this is where a nominee with civil rights expertise could prove the most valuable.

There is still time to appoint many exceptional candidates to the federal bench before the mid-term elections threaten to close down the confirmation process or turn it into a political sideshow to motivate the respective bases. But the window of opportunity is quickly closing and will close even sooner should another Supreme Court Justice decide to retire. President Obama is fond of quoting Martin Luther King’s admonition about the “fierce urgency of now.” That call should apply to the Administration’s efforts to reshape the federal judiciary. In our view, there is nothing more important.

Leslie Proll is Director of the Washington, DC office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.