The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts designates federal judicial vacancies in courts where the current number of judges are wholly inadequate to address the court’s caseload as “judicial emergencies.” Yet, as a new issue Center for America Progress issue brief shows, fully 200 million Americans now live in a jurisdiction facing a judicial emergency:

Some of these courts have such a serious shortage of judges that they are barely able to function. In Arizona, for example, the federal trial court’s felony caseload has nearly doubled in just two years from 3,023 in 2008 to 5,219 in 2010 — causing tremendous delays for all other litigants. Similarly, in southern Texas, a federal trial judge’s criminal caseload can be nearly six times normal. According to Judge W. Royal Furgeson, this means that judges are only able to devote as much time to major trials as judges in “night traffic court” devote to small fines for minor driving offenses.

Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn, a George H.W. Bush appointee, just issued an opinion striking down parts of Alabama’s newly-enacted anti-immigrant law. Although the opinion blocks several of the law’s provisions, including the provision making it a crime for undocumented immigrants to work, the opinion leaves untouched a provision of Alabama law requiring public schools to systematically determine the immigration status of public school students and to report the number of undocumented students in their district to the state.

Very few undocumented families will be willing to send their children to public school if the school is collecting data on whether or not they should be deported. Accordingly, today’s decision is a victory for Alabama’s efforts to intimidate undocumented families from sending their children to school, and will almost certainly encourage state lawmakers who share Alabama’s hostility towards immigrants to enact copycat laws.

It’s not at all clear, however, that this decision will be upheld on appeal. Judge Blackburn’s opinion relies on irrelevant distinctions, misrepresents binding Supreme Court precedent, and even ignores the plain language of the Alabama law. The meat of the law being challenged in this lawsuit provides that:

Every public elementary and secondary school in this state, at the time of enrollment in kindergarten or any grade in such school, shall determine whether the student enrolling in public school was born outside the jurisdiction of the United States or is the child of an alien not lawfully present in the United States and qualifies for assignment to an English as Second Language class or other remedial program.

The statute accomplishes this goal by setting up an elaborate records checking process. First, all school children are required to present their birth certificate to the school. If the child was born outside the United States or they fail to provide a birth certificate, then their family must either provide the school with official documentation of the student’s immigration status or swear under penalty of perjury that the child is lawfully present. All children whose families fail to complete these steps will be presumed to be in the country illegally.

Bizarrely, Judge Blackburn concluded that this decision does not violate a Supreme Court decision forbidding states from requiring immigrants to register with the state. Even more bizarrely, Blackburn also concluded that the Alabama law “does not compel school officials to determine the immigration status of a parent of a student.” Perhaps she missed the part of the law where it says that “[e]very public elementary and secondary school in this state . . . shall determine whether the student enrolling in public school was born outside the jurisdiction of the United States or is the child of an alien not lawfully present in the United States.”

So the good news is that Blackburn’s reasoning is very weak and is unlikely be particularly convincing to a court of appeals. The bad news is that her decision appeals to the extremely conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit — the same appeals court that recently ignored nearly 200 years of Supreme Court precedent to strike down part of the Affordable Care Act.

Additionally, it is worth noting that today’s decision rested solely on the narrow legal grounds that Alabama’s law is not “preempted” by federal law. It did not consider the looming question of whether the Supreme Court’s decision in Plyer v. Doe, which forbids public schools from denying an education to undocumented immigrants, invalidates Alabama’s attempt to systematically intimidate undocumented families against sending their kids to school. A group of immigration advocates filed a lawsuit claiming that the Alabama law violates Plyer and a decision could come down on that case as soon as today.

Should the Alabama law ultimately be upheld, however, it will do nothing to actually deport the millions of undocumented families living in the United States. What it will do, however, is create an entire generation of Alabama residents who, having been denied their right to be educated, will grow up with few options other than crime or exploitation.

The moment President Obama started nominating new judges, Senate Republicans launched an unprecedented campaign of obstruction against his nominees. Indeed, federal judges are now retiring at more than twice the rate that they are being replaced, an unsustainable course that will eventually shutdown the judiciary’s ability to function. Both of President Obama’s two predecessors appointed far more judges at this point in their presidencies:

Some of this pressure will be released in the next two weeks, as the Senate reached a deal to confirm 10 pending nominees. Yet, as Nicole Flatow notes, the real story here is the 17 nominees who are ready for confirmation votes but will nonetheless remain behind a wall of obstructionism:

The deal moves forward several long-delayed nominees, but follows a pattern that has developed of leaving to languish many other nominees with bipartisan support. Among the 17 pending nominees that were not included in the deal, four have been awaiting a vote by the Senate since the 111th Congress, and six are considered judicial emergencies by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Additionally, only one of the 10 nominees who will receive votes is a court of appeals nominee — the rest are nominated to relatively low-ranking district courts. And that sole court of appeals nominee, Judge Henry Floyd, is a George W. Bush appointee to the district court who is at least as much the choice of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as he is the choice of President Obama.

There is some good news in this recent package of soon-to-be-confirmed judges. Most notably, the package includes Allison Nathan, an openly gay attorney and former Supreme Court clerk. Still, Nathan and her nine new colleagues will do very little to overcome the growing vacancy crisis facing the federal bench.

Former Pennsylvania state judge Michael Conahan was sentenced last Friday to 210 months in prison for his involvement in a scandal to enrich private prison corporations by sentencing juvenile pranksters and other extremely minor offenders to be incarcerated in a corporate-run facility:

Michael Conahan, a former jurist in Luzerne County, was sentenced on Friday to 210 months in custody by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Edwin M. Kosik II. Conahan was also ordered to pay $874,000 in restitution. [...] As Main Justice reported in August, Ciavarella, former president judge of the Court of Common Pleas and former judge of the Juvenile Court for Luzerne County, was sentenced to 28 years in prison and ordered to make restitution of $965,930. [...]

Conahan’s role in the “cash for kids” scheme was to order the closing of a county-run detention center, clearing the way for Ciavarella, once known as a strict “law and order” judge, to send young offenders to private facilities. This arrangement worked out well for Ciavarella and Conahan, as well as the builder of the facilities and a developer, who pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

The arrangement didn’t work out so well for the young offenders, some of them sent away for offenses that were little more than pranks and would have merited probation, or perhaps just scoldings, if the judges had tried to live up to their oaths.

Sadly, this kind of behavior by the private prisons industry is not at all surprising. The industry spent millions in lobbying dollars to push harsh criminal penalties and longer sentences in order to maximize their own profitability. Leading lawmakers like Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) each supported major prison privatization plans after receiving tens of thousands of dollars in donations from the industry. Indeed, the number of prisoners incarcerated in corporate-run facilities grew by 37 percent during a seven-year period when their lobbying efforts also grew by 165 percent.

Nevertheless, the willingness of two judges to simply trade away their judicial oaths to benefit a corporation’s bottom line is truly shocking.

A powerful Republican leader in the Alabama state Senate apologized yesterday for referring to African Americans as “aborigines,” calling his comments “careless and unnecessary.” State Sen. Scott Beason (R) was recorded making the comments as part of an undercover investigation, the tapes of which were played in court, the AP reports:

Beason was recorded making the remarks about gamblers in predominantly black Greene County. He made the recordings while helping the FBI investigate claims of lawmakers being bribed by gambling interests to pass a bill legalizing video poker games. In one transcript, Beason and two other Republican legislators were talking about economic development in Greene County and the customers at one of its largest employers, Greenetrack casino in Eutaw.

“That’s y’all’s Indians,” one Republican said.

“They’re aborigines, but they’re not Indians,” Beason replied.

Beason’s comments were played several months ago, but he is only now apologizing. Beason has a history of making offensive comments about racial minorities, including saying that lawmakers should “empty the clip” to stop undocumented immigration, and state Democrats are calling for him to resign or at least be removed as chairman of the powerful Senate Rules Committee. “Racism should have no place in the Alabama Senate. It is in the best interest of all Alabamians that he resign immediately,” said state Sen. Vivian Figures (D), who is African American.

But the Senate Republican Caucus said Beason will be allowed him to retain his position, saying his apology was sufficient. “The Republicans have a supermajority,” said state Democratic chairman Mark Kennedy, “And this is the man they choose to lead one of the most powerful committees in the Legislature.”

Article I Section II of the United States Constitution specifically states, “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.” But North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) would rather we just skip over that section and suspend congressional elections for two years. Speaking at a Rotary Club event today, Perdue proposed holding off on elections for a while so lawmakers can focus on the economy — a suggestion that’s breathtaking just by virtue of how blatantly unconstitutional it is:

Speaking to a Cary rotary club today, N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue suggested suspending Congressional elections for two years so that Congress can focus on economic recovery and not the next election.

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that,” Perdue said. “You want people who don’t worry about the next election.”

The comment — which came during a discussion of the economy — perked more than a few ears. It’s unclear whether Perdue, a Democrat, is serious — but her tone was level and she asked others to support her on the idea.

It’s not hard to sympathize with the sentiment behind Perdue’s remark. Because they have to run for reelection every two years, congressmen remain so fixated on fundraising and campaigning that they forget to be lawmakers and have trouble putting politics aside to focus on compromise and what’s good for the country. However, it’s a dangerous precedent to set to suggest we simply suspend democracy every time unemployment goes above 9 percent.

The serious, responsible way to pursue Perdue’s idea would be through a constitutional amendment. As the American Prospect observes, unnecessarily frequent elections contribute to Washington’s gridlock and the plague of never-ending campaigns. Extending terms for members of the House is a discussion worth having — but preferably in a legal way.

Deep budgets cuts in states across the country could jeopardize citizens’ most fundamental right: to vote for their elected representatives. NPR reports today that states’ election offices have been particularly hard hit by the cutbacks, and voters may experience longer lines and faulty voting equipment as a result:

Gail Pellerin, the county clerk in Santa Cruz, Calif., says she’s considering trimming the number of voting sites in her county by about 20 percent next year because her budget keeps shrinking.

“Each year, they come back and say, ‘Do more with less, you know, we’re going to end up having to give you less again,’” she says, adding that her budget for extra workers at election time has also been reduced. She says this means voters might have to travel farther to cast their ballots, and wait longer for help. Workers in her office also face mandatory furloughs.[...]

In South Carolina, the State Election Commission is also feeling the squeeze. In 2000, the office had a budget of over $2 million. Today, it’s making do with about $850,000 — a 60 percent cut, says spokesman Chris Whitmire.

“Basically, we’re down to a critical level — sort of a bare-bones level — where if we saw any more cuts I think it would have a significant impact on our ability to provide services to counties,” he says.

The state of California is no longer paying counties to send out absentee ballots, which means counties will have to come up with the money on their own if their residents are to have the option of voting absentee. Several states have shortened the number of days for early voting, consolidated the number of precincts, or eliminated paper voting guides to save money.

One of the biggest concerns about the cuts is how they will impact electronic voting machines. Most places bought new electronic equipment after the 2000 elections but its much more expensive to maintain and usually needs to be replaced every 10-12 years. But election expert Charles Stewart says that many election offices are deferring or canceling maintenance contracts to save money.

While all voters will be affected, the changes disproportionately impact low-income and elderly voters who have limited resources or capacity to travel long distances to vote or wait for hours in line. A near-record turnout is expected in the 2012 elections, but with less money, fewer machines, poll workers, and voting sites, it’s unclear that states will be able to handle the influx.

In yet another heartwarming example of “compassionate conservatism,” several Republican congressmen have proposed a bill that would force authorities to deport undocumented immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence and come to them for help. Police officers and immigrant advocates are speaking out against the law, which would make victims of violent crime far less likely to report it to the police:

According to immigrant advocates, a new immigration enforcement bill being considered in Congress would undermine existing immigration law by removing prosecutorial discretion and deferred action, two components that protect undocumented victims of domestic violence.

Michelle Ortiz — the supervising attorney of Lucha, a unit within the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center — says that Rep. Lamar Smith’s Hinder the Administration Legalization Temptation Act (better known as the HALT Act) would force immigration authorities to deport victims of domestic violence who reach out for help.

Smith, R-Texas, has said the HALT Act is necessary because President Obama is seeking “backdoor amnesty” for millions of undocumented immigrants. The bill is cosponsored by Florida Republicans Vern Buchanan, Richard Nugent and C.W. Bill Young.

Republicans have been crying foul ever since the Obama administration announced last month that it would suspend deportation proceedings against many undocumented immigrants who pose no threat to national security or public safety. But venting their anger by forcibly deporting abused women and separating them from their families seems particularly cruel.

Ortiz explains that the bill would repeal many of the protections offered under the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. When domestic violence victims self-petition the Immigration Service and have their petition approved (which means they have already proven they are victims and married their partner in good faith), ICE gives them deferred action. This is not a legal status, but a protection from deportation, and gives them an avenue to apply for work authorization.

But Smith’s bill would end deferred action — as well as prosecutorial discretion that allows ICE agents to be lenient on abuse victims — thereby stripping immigration authorities of their power to protect the undocumented women who most need their help.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) was supposed to be the Tea Party’s messiah. He thinks Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional. He rebels against climate science. And he would eliminate all national banking and consumer protection laws. There’s just one problem. Perry also signed a law that treats undocumented immigrant children as human beings — something Perry’s base vehemently opposes.

So leading conservatives spent most of yesterday proclaiming their new savior: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Before the GOP anoints Christie as their new Chosen One, however, they might want to take a moment to consider the New Jersey governor’s eminently reasonable record on immigration. Simply put, Chris Christie makes Rick Perry look like Tom Tancredo:

Chris Christie is hardly the ally that illegal-immigration foes are looking for. In 2010, Christie told Politico that America needs to come up with a “clear path to citizenship.” He didn’t say “for illegal immigrants,” but since America already has a clear path to citizenship for legal immigrants, that’s what he meant. This is an entirely reasonable and mainstream position, but in much of the GOP, they call it “amnesty.”

Christie’s opponents could also point to the time he insisted that being in the country illegally is not a crime but an “administrative matter.” He’s right — simply overstaying your visa, for example, can get you deported but can’t land you in jail. But to impassioned illegal-immigration warriors, we’re not sure the nuance will be appreciated.

Then there’s Christie’s record on illegal immigration as a U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, the job he held before he became governor. Back in 2008, Bill Tucker, a producer on Lou Dobbs’s now-deceased CNN show, could only find thirteen illegal-immigration cases prosecuted by Christie’s office between 2002 and 2007. Tucker compared that to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Kansas, which, despite a much smaller population, prosecuted 597 cases in the same time period. “This man is an utter embarrassment,” Dobbs wailed.

Indeed, Dobbs had a whole lot of other choice phrases for Christie’s “arrogance, incompetence and cuteness,” which you can watch here:

So Christie is hardly qualified for the job of ultra-pure defender of Tea Party values, but the truth really is that no one is. If Rick Perry’s plan to kill Social Security, eliminate national child labor laws and the minimum wage, thumb his nose at science, and turn the keys of the nation’s economy over to Goldman Sachs and Bank of America isn’t enough to satisfy the Republican base, it’s tough to imagine anyone who would be so untainted by reason that they could succeed where Perry failed.

Earlier this month, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) proposed rigging the 2012 presidential election for the Republican candidate by effectively giving away as many as a dozen of the blue state’s electoral votes to that candidate. Under Corbett’s scheme, each of the state’s 18 congressional districts will allocate one electoral vote during the 2012 election, rather than having the state’s entire electoral vote go to the overall winner of the state. Because the GOP will also gerrymander these districts ensure that up to 12 of them are solidly Republican, the purpose of Corbett’s plan’s is to ensure that President Obama will get less electoral votes than his challenger even if he wins the state as a whole.

Yesterday, however, nearly every single Republican member of Congress from Pennsylvania met with state lawmakers to oppose Corbett’s vote rigging scheme — warning that it could potentially endanger their own ability to hold their seats. According to the subscription-only site Capitolwire:

Most of the state’s Republican congressional delegation met with top state House and Senate leaders backing colleagues who want to sideline a pair of controversial bills: a Senate-proposed electoral college change bill, and a mandate that Pennsylvanians show photo ID before voting.

Eleven members of the state’s 12-member congressional Republican delegation met with Senate leaders this afternoon . . . . The congressmen also voiced opposition in both meetings to Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi’s proposal to split up the state’s 20 electoral votes by congressional district, in 2012. Pileggi, R-Delaware, heard out comments against his proposal from U.S. Reps. Bill Shuster, R-Blair, Tim Murphy, R-Allegheny, Jim Gerlach, R-Chester, Charlie Dent, R-Lehigh and Meehan.

All stressed the negative impact this could have by making swing U.S. House districts more competitive, and more expensive.

The fact that several Republican lawmakers objected to the Pennsylvania GOP’s proposed voter ID law is a particularly interesting wrinkle in this drama. Voter ID laws, which disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor, minority and student voters, have been the centerpiece of the Republican Party’s war on voting — an effort which also includes making it harder to register to vote and taking away opportunities to vote early.

As it turns out, however, Republican members of Congress in Pennsylvania care a whole lot less about mucking with the rules to benefit the GOP as a whole than they do about keeping the same rules in place that allowed them to get elected in the first place.

Today was the deadline for the Obama Administration to seek something known as en banc review — a procedure allowing an entire court of appeals to review a three-judge panel’s decision — of the Eleventh Circuit’s erroneous decision striking down part of the Affordable Care Act. The Administration has decided not to seek this review.

This is significant not because the full court is likely to reverse the panel’s error — the Eleventh Circuit is a notorious hotbed of far right conservatives — but because it reflects the Administration’s understanding that it has little to gain from delaying this case’s ascent to the Supreme Court. One effect of an en banc petition is that it significantly extends the amount of time DOJ can wait before it has to seek review of the court of appeals’ decision in the Supreme Court. Because DOJ did not ask the full court of appeals to weigh in, it is now exceedingly likely that the Supreme Court will consider this case during its 2011-2012 term.

It is not the least bit surprising that the Obama Administration passed up this potential opportunity to delay the case until after the next Supreme Court term. For one thing, the Administration has consistently chosen not to engage in delay tactics throughout this litigation. Most recently, DOJ refused to argue that the courts lack jurisdiction to hear the case until 2015 despite the fact that one court of appeal concluded that they do lack jurisdiction and another expressed sympathy with that view. More importantly, the Administration should be eager to get this case in front of the justices since they are overwhelmingly likely to win once the case gets there.

The biggest loser in the Administration’s decision not to file are the handful of right-wing commentators who have claimed — despite no evidence to that effect — that DOJ would seek en banc review as part of some nefarious plot to delay the litigation. The most prominent of these commentators was former DC Circuit nominee Miguel Estrada, who touted this theory at a recent panel hosted by the American Constitution Society:

The strategy of the Administration is to do cartwheels to keep the case out of the Supreme Court so as not to have a ruling before the 2012 election. I mean, they take every extension. They do everything they can to stretch it out . . . . I will bet you any amount of money that the Administration is going to seek en banc in the Eleventh Circuit.

Watch it:

Estrada is one of the nation’s top appellate litigators, so he knows better than to make this kind of claim despite the vast wealth of evidence to the contrary. In 2003, Senate Democrats blocked Estrada’s nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit because they were concerned that, despite Estrada’s significant legal talent, he would be unable to ensure that his legal analysis on the bench is untainted by his own desire to see the law through a conservative lens. That decision is looking pretty good today.