[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 48 (Tuesday, March 19, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S2424]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Judicial Conference

  Mr. President, on forum shopping, last year I came to the floor a 
number of times to speak about a grave problem in our Federal judiciary 
known as judge shopping, where hard-right litigants bring cases before 
sympathetic judges in order to push their radical agenda.
  Last summer, I led a number of my Senate colleagues in writing to the 
Judicial Conference, asking that they recommend policy reforms to 
better ensure impartially and basic fairness. I am very pleased that 
last week, the Judicial Conference responded to our concerns by 
announcing a new policy to assign civil cases that have statewide or 
national implications to judges at random across a district instead of 
going to a predictable single judge in a single division.
  These reforms would prevent absurd situations like the one we saw 
last year in the Northern District of Texas, where one extremist judge 
was handpicked by the hard right to revoke FDA approval of mifepristone 
nationwide.
  If you care at all about impartial courts, last week's announcement 
was good news and probably came across as just common sense. So it was 
quite striking and, frankly, deeply troubling to see the Republican 
leader come down to the floor last week and excoriate the Judicial 
Conference's announcement. The Republican leader accused the Conference 
of ``taking the bait'' of partisan Democrats, as if randomly assigning 
judges to cases is inherently partisan. The Republican leader seems to 
want to see judges be handpicked, when we know their views already, to 
make decisions. That flies in the face of justice.
  He claimed that it is not the place of Senators to weigh in on how 
the courts administer themselves. Well, Congress created the Judicial 
Conference a century ago precisely to recommend policy updates like 
this.
  We all know, of course, what the deal is here: The Republican leader 
is fuming because these recommendations would make it harder for hard-
right partisans to hijack our courts for their purposes. Leader 
McConnell is not even pretending to hide his partisan motivations in 
this case, and that is deeply damaging to the trust of our courts. I 
would encourage the Republican leader to focus more on finding ways to 
restore trust in the judiciary than defending an obviously abusive 
practice that most Americans would oppose.
  I believe that Congress--Congress--has a duty to conduct oversight of 
the Federal judiciary. We will keep investigating abuses within our 
court system going forward.