Mr. Cardin mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from maryland. Mr. Cardin i ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Morning business morning business is closed. Under the previous order, the senate will proceed to continuing resolution to consider the following nomination. The clerk nomination, the judiciary, robert leon wilkins of the District Of Columbia to be United States circuit judge for the District Of Columbia circuit. The presiding officer under the previous order, the time until 5 30 p. M. Will be equally divided and controlled in the usual form. The senator from maryland. Mr. Cardin mr. President , i rise today in strong support of the nomination of judge robert l. Wilkins to be a circuit judge for the United States court of appeals for the District Of Columbia. I was pleased to introduce judge wilkins to the Judiciary Committee in september and the committee favorably reported his nomination in october. Judge wilkins currently serves as a Federal District judge for the u. S. District court for the District Of Columbia and was unanimously confirmed by the senate for this position in 2010. I urge the senate to invoke cloture to allow be a upordown vote on this extremely qualified nominee. He is a native of muncie, indiana, obtained his d. S. From rose holeman institute of technology and his j. D. From harvard law school. Following graduation, judges wilkins clerked for the honorable earl b. Killia m for the Southern District of california. He later served as staff attorney for the Public Defender Service for the District Of Columbia. He then practiced as a partner with the Venable Law Firm specializing in white collar crime, intellectual property and complex civil litigation before taking the bench as a judge. Besides judge wilkins professional accomplishments as an attorney he has played a leading role as a plaintiff in the landmark civil rights case in maryland involving racial profiling. During his tenure with the Public Defender Service and in private practice, judge wilkins served as the lead plaintiff in wilkins versus state of maryland against the Maryland State Police for a traffic stop they conducted on judge wilkins and his family. In 1992, judge wilkins attended his grandfathers funeral in chicago and then began in allnight road trip home with three family members. Judge wilkins was due back in washington, d. C. That coming morning for a Court Appearance as a public defender. A Maryland State Police trooper pulled him over, the Police Detained the family and deployed a drug sniffing dog to check the car after judge wilkins declined to consent to a search of the car stating there was no reasonable suspicion. The family stood in the rain during the search which did not uncover any contraband. Judge wilkins later said its hard to describe the frustration and pain you feel when people pressure you to be guilty for no good reason and you know that you are innocent. We fit the profile to a t, we are traveling on i68 early in the morning in a virginia rental car and my cousin and i the front seat passengers were young, black males. The only problem was we were not dangerous, that they were not guilty of anything. It should not be suspicious to travel on a highway early in the morning in a virginia rental car and it should not be suspicious to be black. After the traffic stop, judge wilkins began reviewlg reviewing state police data and while most of the drivers searched for black, blacks made up only a small minority of the drivers traveling on the road. Judge wilkins filed a civil rights lawsuit which resulted in two landmark settles celtments first to require a systematic computation and publication by Police Agencies of data for all highway, drug and weapons searches including the race of the motorist involved, the justification for the search and the outcome of the search. The settlement required the state police to hire an independent scument consult annual, conduct internal investigation of all citizen complaints of racial profiling and provide the maryland naacp with quarterly reports containing detailed information on number, nature, location, and disposition of racial profiling complaints. These settlements inspired a june, 1999 executive order by president clinton, congressional hearings and legislation that has been enacted in half of the 50 states. It was a landmark case. It pointed out the right way in which we should have oversight and the right way to end racial profiling. And judge wilkins took the leadership and did something that many of us i think would have had a hard time doing, putting himself forward in order to do what was right. As my colleagues know, ive introduced s. 1038, the end racial profiling act, which would codify many of the practices now used by the Maryland State Police to root out use of racial profiling by law enforcement. The Judiciary Committee held a hearing on ending the use of racial profiling last year and i am hopeful that with broader discussions on racial profiling generated by the tragic death of Trayvon Martin we can move forward on this legislation. Judge wilkins played a key role in the passage of the statute establishing the museum of africanAmerican History and he served as the chairman and the site and Building Committee of that president ial commission. The work of the president ial Commission Led to the passage of public law number 108184 which authorized the creation of the National Human of africanAmerican History and culture. This human will be the newest addition to the smithsonian and is scheduled to open in 2015 between the museum of American History and the Washington Monument on the national mall. Judge wilkins continues his pro bono work to this day. He cowrnl serves as the liaison to the Standing Committee on Pro Bono Legal services of the judicial conference of the d. C. Circuit. He is committed to public service. He is committed to equal judge under the law justice under the law. As a judge since 2011 he has presided over hundreds of cases including both jury and bench trials. He sits on a federal bench which hears a annual unusual number of cases of importance to the federal government, including voting rights, environmental and Administrative Law cases. Judge will will coins cins has been nominated for the Appellate Court that would hear appeals from the courts on which he currently sits. He understands the responsibilities of the court hes been nominated to by president obama. The American Bar Association gave judge wilkins a rating of unanimously well qualified to serve as appellate judge which is the highest possible rating from the nonpartisan peer review. The u. S. Court of appeals for the District Of Columbia circuit is also referred to as the nations second highest court. The Supreme Court only accepts a handful of cases each year so the d. C. Circuit often has the last word and proclaims the final law of the land in a range of critical areas of the law. Only eight of the 11 court seats are filled resulting in a higher than 25 vacancy rate on this critical court. It is today with large vacancy numbers, the Court Channels complex cases in the area of Administrative Law including reviewing decisions and policy areas such as environmental, labor and financial regulations. Nationally only 15 of appeals nationwide are administrative in nature and the d. C. Circuit that figure is 43 . They have a much larger caseload of complex cases. The court also hears a variety of sensitive terrorism cases involving complicated issues such as enemy combatants and detention policies. Let me quote from former chief judge Henry Edwards who said review of large multiparty difficult administrative appeals is the stable of the judicial work in the d. C. Circuit. This lien distinguishes the work of the d. C. Circuit from the work of other circuits. It also explains why its impossible to compare the workload of the d. C. Circuit with other circuits by simply referring to raw data of case filings, end quote. And chief Justice Roberts note bed twothirds of the cases before the d. C. Circuit involved the federal government in some civil capacity while that figure is less than 25 nationwide. He also described the d. C. Circuits unique character as the court with special responsibility to review legal challenges to conduct the national government. So, mr. President , we have a person who is eminently qualified for this position and judge wilkins, we have a need to fill these vacancies, the senate should carry out its responsibility and conduct an upordown vote on judge wilkins nomination, were going to have a chance to do that in a few moments. And let me remind my colleagues that the Senate Unanimously confirmed judge wilkins in 2010 for his current position and he has a distinguished lifelong record of public service. I ask the senate and my colleagues to vote so that we can move forward and get an upordown vote on this eminently qualified judge. And i hope my colleagues will support his confirmation. With that, mr. President , i would suggest the absence of a quorum. The presiding officer the clerk will call the roll. Quorum call a senator mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from vermont. Mr. Leahy mr. President , i ask consent the call of the quorum be dispensed with. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Leahy mr. President , i listened to the words of my good friend from maryland and the senator from maryland is absolutely right in what he said. I it is a strange time. You know, ive ive been here almost four decades and ive experienced some dramatic changes in Senate Majorities and leadership styles going back and forth between both parties. But nothing at all has compared to the change thats occurred here in the last five years. Since president obama was sworn in as president of the United States, something ive never seen with any other president and ive been here since the time of president ford Senate Republicans have made it their priority to obstruct at every turn the consideration of nominations that he has put forward. The republican leader said his main goal was to have the president fail. Confirmation votes that regularly occurred by consent, now you have to have cloture. Bipartisan home state support for a nominee no longer is whats needed for timely confirmation. Make no mistake, mr. President , whats happened in this obstruction, Senate Republicans across the line Senate Republicans have crossed the line from the use of the senate rules to the abuse of the senate rules. Its the same kind of abuse that shut down our federal government recently, costing the taxpayers billions of dollars. But one of the things that concerned me as chairman of the senate Judiciary Committee, what it is doing to undermine and eventually destroy both the integrity and the independence of our federal judiciary. In the great glories of our threepart government in this country is the federal judiciary has always been independent, weve kept it out of politics. This last five years theyve dragged it into politics. And more than that, the same kind of republican obstruction has left the federal judiciary often with 90 or more vacancies throughout this country over the past five years. Now, if youre a litigant and you need the protection of our federal courts, you dont care whether theyre republicans or democrats. You dont care whether they were supported by a republican or a democratic president. All you want, whether youre plaintiff, defendant, state or respondent, you want to be able to go into that courthouse and be treated fairly. Now you can go into that courthouse and theres nobody there, 90 vacancies caused by the stonewalling on the other side of the aisle. You know, the same republicans who are stonewalling once insisted that filibustering of judicial nominations was unconstitutional. They said very clearly when there was a republican preside president , if youre going to filibuster judicial nominations, thats unconstitutional. Well, the constitution didnt change when barack obama became president , but whoopdedo, suddenly their attitude changed on this, they reversed course. And ill tell you how bad it was. If anybody talked about filibustering a judge when there was a republican president , they all would be on the floor sayi saying, oh, this is unconstitutional. Now, i dont know what there is different about this president , but the very first name he had out here, the very first one, they filibustered that judicial nominee. Can you imagine . This is the president , they started the first very within a very short time after the president was sworn in, the very first person. Oh, incidentally, that judicial nominee was strongly supported by the most senior republican senator here, the most senior republican senator supported him but the leadership oh, no, weve got to filibuster and block. Because, after all, its president obama who nominated, not president bush. And they filibustered 34 of president obamas judicial nominees. The president s only been in there five years. Thats twice as many nominees that required cloture during eight years of president bushs terms. Most of them are, by any standard, noncontroversial. Most of them are supported by wellknown names in in the law, both republicans and democrats. But we still had to fight and get cloture to get them through. Most recently the Senate Republicans decided to filibuster wellqualified now knee after wellqualified nominee for the United States court of appeals for the d. C. Circuit. The court has three vacant seats. Now, during the Bush Administration during the Bush Administration, the Senate Confirmed president bushs nominees to the 9th and the 10th and the 11th seat and then there was a vacancy to the 10th seat and to the 10th seat again. But now when a new president has been elected i might say reelected by a solid majority, the Senate Republicans say, oh, no, wait a minute, we needed those judges when it was a republican. We dont need them now that its a democrat. Its an unprecedented level of obstruction. In my four decades here, ive never seen anything like this by either party, what the Senate Republicans are doing. In fact, id say to the distinguished presiding officer who is from maine, the former senior senator from maine, wellrespected republican in this body, olympia snowe, recently said, when you have these backtoback rejections of nominees, at some point it may be time to reverse the results of the election. Now, tonight were going to try to end the filibuster against judge robert wilkins. Hes got the highest rating possible by the American Bar Association. When he was up for the u. S. District court, he was confirmed unanimously. Hes presided over hundreds of cases. Hes issued significant decisions in various areas of the law. Prior to serving on the bench, he was a partner for 10 years in private practice and 10 years the public defender in the District Of Columbia. This is a man who in past president s, in past senates would probably go through by a voice vote after dozens of senators in both parties stood on the floor to praise him. But what the difference is, he was nominated by president obama and suddenly theyre trying to block him. This is a man who served as the lead plaintiff in a racial profiling case which rose out of an incident in which he and three family members were stopped and detained while returning from a funeral in chicago. The lawsuit led to landmark settlements that required systematic statewide of compilation and publication of highway traffic stop and search data by race. Inspired an executive order by president clinton, legislation in the house and the senate, and legislation in at least 28 states prohibiting racial profiling or requiring data collection. A landmark case. The distinguished presiding officer and i come from states where we hope we dont have racial profiling. Most of us lookalik look alikee states of maine and vermont. But many of us, many senators here know there are there are cases of racial profiling and they should be stopped. Mr. President , im aware of that happening even to members of my own family. Maybe when some of these change, if we have more diversification in our federal bench. You know, if judge wilkins is confirmed, hes only going to be the sixth africanamerican to ever have served in whats often considered the secondmost powerful court in the country, the d. C. Circuit. Again, with the highest qualifications. I mean, this most people who are nominated by either republicans or democrats, no matter who they are, to courts wish they had hi