Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seems intent upon keeping alive the Judicial Conference’s recent blunder into judge-selection policies that, as I explained, one-sidedly catered to a grievance of the Left. On Friday, he sent a letter to the Judicial Conference applauding it for its policy while managing in his first sentence to mischaracterize the policy as “requir[ing] judges to be assigned through a district-wide random selection process.” The Conference in fact had no statutory authority to enact such a requirement and had made clear to Senate Republicans that it was making a mere suggestion. That recognition was noted in a March 21 letter circulated by Senator John Cornyn that was signed by most elected Senate Republican leaders along with every Republican member of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee and Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government.
Schumer, by contrast, was joined in his letter by an assortment of eight of the most left-leaning Democrats in the Senate, including Ed Markey, sponsor of the pending court-packing bill, and Elizabeth Warren. As if to underscore that their Friday exercise was pointless, Schumer was sent on the same day a letter from Chief Judge David Godbey of the Northern District of Texas. Responding to an earlier letter from the Senate majority leader, Godbey informed him that judges in his district had met on March 27 and declined to follow the Judicial Conference’s suggestion: “The consensus was not to make any change to our case assignment process at this time.”