The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

The judges that serve on federal courts have a powerful impact on our lives.  Partisan fighting in the U.S. Senate over judicial nominations makes the process of nominating and confirming fair and impartial judges to these courts difficult.

• The New York Times urged President Obama not to allow partisan fighting to influence his choices, which should be the "highly qualified, progressive-minded judges the nation needs."
• In an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor at Slate, said that federal judges matter "too much to have their nominations and confirmations take place on the sticky bathroom floors of American politics."