Sen. Casey returns a blue slip for Stephanos Bibas

I blogged a while back on the good news that University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Stephanos Bibas was nominated to fill a judgeship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. Having flagged the nomination before, I thought I would add the good news that Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) reportedly has returned a blue slip on the nomination.

As far as I can tell, the Bibas nomination hasn't gathered any particular opposition. The American Bar Association gave him a unanimous well-qualified vote, its highest rating. A law-professor letter gathered lots of big-name signatures, and if you scan through the list of names, you'll see that most of them are on the political left (including some, I think it's fair to say, on the pretty far left). A Supreme Court practitioner bigwig letter also had some good bipartisan support, including from Seth Waxman and Donald Verrilli. [Updated to add: Also, 55 members of the Penn Law faculty have publicly endorsed the nomination.]

I realize that different readers will have different views about what the Senate should do with respect to President Trump's judicial nominations. It's a political process, and I don't claim to know all the politics behind all of the different nominations. But in a rational world, the Senate would confirm Bibas. I'm glad to see that it seems to be on track to doing so.