More than five months after he passed out of committee, U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis of Maryland (left) is getting an up-and-down vote in the U.S. Senate today.

Davis is one of four judges nominated by President Obama for vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which includes West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The others are Virginia Supreme Court Justice Barbara M. Keenan and Superior Court Judge Albert Diaz and Court of Appeals Judge James Wynn, both of North Carolina.

Five seats on the 15-judge panel are currently open. As I’ve noted before, Obama’s nominees are poised to shift the dynamic of the 4th Circuit, widely regarded as one of, if not the, most conservative of the nation’s 13 federal circuits.

As this handy-dandy chart from Congressional Quarterly tells us, with the exception of Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (68-31), Obama’s nominees have all received more than 90 votes in the Senate, once the nominations are actually taken up. In fact, only Gerald Lynch, a federal judge from New York confirmed to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, received any votes against him, and that was a whopping total of three.

Despite their overwhelming approval by the Senate, none of Obama’s nominees have had a voice vote.

It will be interesting to see how Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) use the hour alotted to discuss Judge Davis’ nomination. Remember, the last time the senate discussed a nominee’s credentials, Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Maryland) and Sessions used the time to debate the pace of judicial confirmations.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9, 2009 at 11:30 am and is filed under Nominations, President Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.