WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) — The government shutdown has delayed a committee vote on Robert Leon Wilkins, President Barack Obama’s third nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee was expected to advance Wilkins’ nomination during an Oct. 3 business meeting.
Wilkins
However, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. and chairman of the committee,postponed the meeting in the wake of the government shutdown, which began a week ago.
Another business meeting, set for Wednesday, also has been postponed. The panel was expected to hear from other judicial nominees at the meeting.
It is unclear when Leahy will reschedule the Oct. 3 meeting.
Wilkins is likely to get the committee’s backing before heading to the full Senate.
According to reports, Wilkins, who has served as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia since 2010, sailed through his confirmation hearing last month.
He was nominated, along with Patricia Millett and Cornelia “Nina” Pillard, to the D.C. Circuit by the President in June.
Both Millett, who heads Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP’s Supreme Court practice and co-heads the firm’s national appellate practice, and Pillard, who is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, made it out of the Senate committee on a 10-8 vote.