President Barack Obama, his administration emboldened by his re-election, will push the federal judicial bench left over the next four years, a process he began Thursday by re-submitting 33 heretofore unapproved judicial nominees.
Obama re-nominated Justice Department attorney William Orrick III to the federal court in San Francisco and Troy Nunley, a native of Hunters Point in San Francisco, to the court in Sacramento and 31 other judicial nominees that failed to gain approval from Congress during his first term.
On the heels of a successful bid to raise taxes without making any significant cuts in spending, Obama is free to focus on appointing liberal lawmakers who will serve his ideology and political agenda over the coming years, including shifting the Supreme Court from leaning conservative to leaning liberal.
Orrick, son of the late U.S. District Judge William Orrick, was recommended to Obama by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. The second generation government judge spent four years as a poverty lawyer in Georgia and 25 years with a corporate law firm in San Francisco joining Obama’s Justice Department in 2009.
Nunle was recommended by another liberal California Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein. From San Francisco, he attended St. Mary's College and UC Hastings College of the Law. He was a prosecutor in Alameda and Sacramento counties and a lawyer in the state attorney general's office before Gov. Gray Davis appointed him to the Sacramento County Superior Court in 2002.
With conservative opposition seemingly at bay after being demogogued for months in mainstream media and by Democrats over the “fiscal cliff,” and with a similar battle brewing over Obama’s desire to raise the nation’s debt ceiling again to allow for additional deficit spending, the President is in better position to push his controversial judicial nominees through Congress.
"I urge the Senate to consider and confirm these nominees without delay," Obama said in a statement.
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