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Op-Ed Contributor

America’s Trial Court Judges: Our Front Line for Justice

Credit...Jim Frazier

THE outcry over the Senate’s failure to hold hearings on Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court is fully justified. But that isn’t the only judiciary scandal on Capitol Hill. Even as the spotlight shines on the high court, the Senate has refused to confirm dozens of uncontroversial nominees to fill vacancies in the federal trial courts.

Such obstructionism has become an everyday occurrence. Just last week, Senate Republicans refused to vote on 11 federal district court nominees whom the Judiciary Committee had already approved — even those who were supported by Republicans in their home states. During President George W. Bush’s last two years in office, the Democratic-controlled Senate confirmed about 57 district court judges. Since Republicans took power in 2014, the Senate has confirmed only 15 of President Obama’s trial court nominees.

This is an even bigger problem than Judge Garland’s stalled nomination. Trial court judges do the bulk of the work in the federal court system: Last year they heard nearly 375,000 new cases, while the Supreme Court justices issued just under 75 opinions. And because most trial court decisions are never appealed, they become the final word in significant disputes that affect millions of Americans.

I know this firsthand. I served as a trial judge for over 21 years, and stepped down from the bench last week. As I walked out of a federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan on one of my last days, an African-American United States marshal asked me if he could have a word.

He explained that he had grown up in New York City’s public housing, and thanked me for my 2013 decision in the “stop and frisk” case. (I ruled that the New York Police Department’s practice in which police officers stopped hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers without reasonable suspicion, a vast majority of whom were innocent African-Americans and Latinos, was unconstitutional.)

“You just can’t know what a difference this has made to so many people in my community,” he said. “You can’t even imagine.”

But I think I can. At the policy’s peak in 2011, officers stopped nearly 700,000 people. That number dropped to about 23,000 last year, and the policy change was not accompanied by a rise in serious crime, despite dire predictions to the contrary. As a result of my rulings and community outcry, the Police Department agreed to reforms, which include better record keeping, the use of police body cameras and the abandonment of racial profiling.

Other examples abound. In 1974, Judge Jack Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York found the de facto segregation in a Coney Island public school to be unconstitutional, a ruling affirmed on appeal. The school was ultimately integrated under his supervision, and without the “white flight” that politicians had feared would result.

And in one of the highest-profile civil rights cases ever in a trial court, Leonard Sand, a judge from the Southern District of New York, ruled about a decade later that both the housing and schools in Yonkers were intentionally segregated, and ordered construction of integrated housing in the city. An appeals court upheld this ruling, which, despite years of public protest, immensely improved the living conditions for thousands of Yonkers residents.

The influence of district judges has likewise had an effect on national security. In the mid-2000s, Judge Alvin Hellerstein, also from the Southern District of New York, ordered the government to disclose photographs under the Freedom of Information Act that depict the abuse of Abu Ghraib detainees, which was affirmed by the appellate court. Judge Hellerstein also effectively forced the government to turn over the Department of Justice’s infamous “torture memos,” which incited a national conversation about whether torture is ever appropriate.

Not every decision by district court judges benefits the public: Last week Judge Thomas Schroeder of North Carolina’s Middle District upheld myriad legislative changes to the state’s voting rules that will result in reduced voting opportunities for minorities, unless reversed.

Whether Judge Garland should be confirmed or not, there can be no denying that Supreme Court nominations are inherently political. So it’s no surprise that they are drawn out for ideological or partisan reasons. But district court nominations are different. Ideology is not the issue: Experience and competence are the only criteria.

And yet the Senate majority’s policy of delaying qualified district-court nominations on purely political grounds undermines public trust in the impartiality and legitimacy of the judiciary. This is especially worrisome because the public’s understanding of how justice is administered is most likely based on its access to and experience with lower court proceedings.

Presidential debates have focused on the Islamic State, trade pacts and immigration policy; meanwhile, the next president will most likely appoint 130 trial judges over the next four years. The public needs to know what’s at stake. Trial judges must spot the issues, decide the outcomes and fashion the remedies in all kinds of disputes. I cannot force this Congress to do its job. But I urge voters not to forget the White House’s power to appoint all judges when they choose the next president.

Shira A. Scheindlin was a United States district court judge for the Southern District of New York.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: America’s Front Line for Justice. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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