Senate Judiciary Committee Action on Judges

This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a nominations hearing and an executive committee hearing at which nominees were processed.

Yesterday afternoon the Committee held a hearing for five nominees: Stephen Higginson, nominee to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals; Jane Triche-Milazzo, nominee to the Eastern District of Louisiana; Alison Nathan and Katherine Forrest, nominees to the Southern District of New York; and Susan Hickey, nominee to the Western District of Arkansas.

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) presided, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking Republican on the Committee, also posed questions. One notable aspect of the hearing was that four female nominees appeared together on the second panel. As AFJ documented in a recent report, nearly 50% of president Obama’s nominees have been women , by far the best percentage of female nominees by any president in American history.

Thursday morning, the committee held an executive business meeting at which four nominees—Steve Six, nominee to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals; Marina Garcia Marmolejo, nominee to the Southern District of Texas; Michael C. Green, nominee to the Western District of New York; and Wilma Antoinette Lewis, nominee to be the District Court of the Virgin Islands—were held over until the Committee’s next meeting on July 16th.