Republican Effort to Unpack the Court

Liberals are tearing into a Republican plan to reduce the number of judges on the country's most important appeals court, calling it a political ploy to keep President Obama from making the court less conservative.

The plan, drafted by Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and supported by at least a half-dozen other Republicans, would prevent Mr. Obama from filling three of the four vacant seats on the court, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Currently, four of the court's full-time judges are Republican appointees and three are Democratic appointees. There are supposed to be 11 full-time judges.

If the president's current nominee for one of those vacancies, Sri Srinivasan, a top official in the solicitor general's office, is confirmed, the Republican-Democrat balance on the court would be even.

And that is where the Republican plan would have the court remain.

“There is more than one way to pack a court to suit one's ideological preferences,” said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, a liberal nonprofit group. “Now that they are facing increasing pressure to stop blocking President Obama's nominees, Republicans have come up with a new plan: just get rid of the vacancies.”

Mr. Grassley has blamed Mr. Obama for waiting so long to fill the court's vacant seats - since he took office in 2009, he has nominated only two people, one of whom went down in a Republican-led filibuster. Mr. Grassley argued that the court could do without those seats because it had a lighter workload than other circuit courts.

“It is an efficient allocation of resources,” Mr. Grassley said of his bill during Mr. Srinivasan's confirmation hearing on Wednesday. “It saves taxpayer dollars. And it will be a significant step towards addressing the severe imbalance in the workloads between some of these circuits.”

There would still be three vacancies even if Mr. Srinivasan is confirmed. Mr. Grassley's bill would redistribute two of those seats to other circuit courts, the Second and 11th Circuits, and eliminate the third seat.