President Joe Biden is joined by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., right, and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., during a celebration of their work to appoint a record number of federal judges at the White House on Jan. 2, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday said the work his administration did in nominating judges confirmed to the federal bench will help protect the nation’s democratic institutions in the years ahead.
“These judges will be independent, they’ll be fair, and they’ll be impartial,” Biden said. “I never thought I’d be saying this, they’ll uphold the Constitution.”
Biden nominated more confirmed judicial nominees than President-elect Donald Trump in his first term, although Trump will begin a second term on Jan. 20 and regain the power to shape the federal judiciary.
With Senate control switching from Democrats to Republicans on Friday, it ends the opportunity for any more confirmation votes before Trump’s inauguration.
Of Biden’s 235 confirmed nominees, 187 were seated to district courts, 45 to federal appeals courts, and two to the Court of International Trade.
He named one justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was confirmed by the Senate and is the first Black woman to sit on the high court.
Nearly 100 of Biden’s nominees previously worked as civil rights lawyers or public defenders, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Additionally, Biden set a record for appointing the most women and more Black, Native American, Latino and Latina, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander judges than during any other presidency of any length, according to the Leadership Conference.
“For the first time in a long, long time, we have a bench that looks like and represents all of America,” Biden said. “We have a record number of judges with backgrounds and experiences that have long been overlooked in the federal judiciary, like advocates for civil rights, workers’ rights, immigrant rights and so much more.”
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accompanied Biden for the White House remarks and said confirming judges was the top priority for the committee.
“We are proud of the fact that these nominees have bipartisan support,” Durbin said. “More than 80% of them received bipartisan support.”
Durbin also thanked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for his work bringing judicial nominations to the Senate floor for votes.
Durbin said he “nagged (Schumer) and beat up on him and twisted his arm and did everything I could to get our nominees on the calendar, and he came through with flying colors.”
Schumer, a New York Democrat also at the White House for the event, agreed, and said Durbin was “as we say in Brooklyn, ‘a noodge.’”
Schumer said not only were the confirmations historic, but that it would be one of the “most consequential accomplishments” of the Biden administration.
“The good news is that these judges will be a barrier against attacks on our democratic institutions. At the district level, these judges will have the first and often decisive impact on cases involving voting rights in elections and democracy writ large,” Schumer said. “These judges will be the shield that protects our democracy.”