A December 8 Washington Post article about President-elect Barack Obama's potential federal judiciary appointments quoted Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice (CFJ), saying Republican senators should “play hardball” on Obama's judicial nominees, and then reported that “Senate Republicans, who retained enough seats in the November elections to filibuster judicial nominees, said they have not settled on a strategy.” However, the Post did not point out that CFJ previously opposed efforts by Democratic senators to filibuster President Bush's judicial appointments, calling filibusters by a minority of senators to block judicial nominations “unconstitutional.”

For example:

• CFJ's website features a page titled “What is Constitutionalism?” that states: "[S]ix nominees have been obstructed by unprecedented and unconstitutional filibuster and 14 remain in limbo."
• On April 13, 2005, in a paper titled, "CFJ: Schumer v. Reality on Bush Judges," CFJ stated that the filibuster “appears nowhere in the Constitution” and that “the Framers' system of checks and balances did not include the filibuster”:

REALITY: The Constitution's Advice and Consent clause clearly stipulates a simple majority of Senators to confirm nominees. This has been settled law since U.S. v. Ballin in 1892. This standard is well known and is the only logical answer to why Democrats did not filibuster Justice Clarence Thomas' nomination in 1991.

By contrast, the filibuster appears nowhere in the Constitution. It evolved in the Senate years after the Framers wrote and ratified the Constitution. In other words, the Framers' system of checks and balances did not include the filibuster.

Just as there may be 60 votes required for certain kinds of spending increases under Senate rules, so there are numerous provisions that prohibit filibusters. If it is OK, for example, for fast-track authority to preclude filibuster of trade agreements, surely it is acceptable to preclude filibusters where they have never been used in 200 years.

• Then-CFJ chairman C. Boyden Gray signed an April 4, 2005, letter referring to the “Constitution's simple majority requirement” for confirming judicial nominees, and calling on the Senate to change its rules to end the filibuster of judicial nominees. The letter in part said:

The Senate must act as steward of the federal courts by returning the power to confirm judges to the Constitution's simple majority requirement. While it is the right of the President to expect the Senate to give Advice and Consent within a reasonable period of time, it is the duty of every Senator to offer Advice and Consent through an honest, up or down vote.

Moreover, the unprecedented abuse of the filibuster is a device intended to undermine the prerogatives of the Presidency as well as the tradition of the Senate. It must not stand. You must not waver. The President, this President, must have the freedom to nominate appellate judges and Supreme Court justices who will restore the courts to their constitutional role.

We are convinced that the proof of history is overwhelming that the Constitutional Options are a conservative response that do not threaten but will restore Senate debate rules and tradition

[...]

We understand that Article I of the Constitution allows the Senate to adopt rules for itself, but that right belongs to this Senate as much as it did to the first Senate. We call for a restoration of Senate traditions, returning to the majority vote on Advice and Consent the Constitution mandates.

• An April 25, 2003, CNS article posted on CFJ's website reported of CFJ: “Sean Rushton, the group's executive director, accused Democrats of carrying out an unprecedented and unconstitutional fight by using a filibuster to hold up the nominations. He said the Committee for Justice is preparing a campaign to defeat these senators in 2004.”

From The Washington Post article:

Energized by Obama's victory, liberal groups are pressing for nominees to their liking. “The voters have sent a mandate to the new president that we can restore balance to the federal courts, and we're confident that will occur,” said Kathryn Kolbert, president of People for the American Way, which has been in touch with transition officials. She vowed to prevent “extremists on the right from hijacking the process.”

Conservatives said they are hoping for moderate nominees but worry that “judges will be an issue where Obama throws a lot of crumbs to his political base,” said Curt Levey, executive director of the Committee for Justices, which advocates a conservative judiciary. “People are worried. Obama has been unusually unabashed about believing in an activist role for judges.”

He called on Republican senators “to play hardball” in resisting Obama's nominees.

Senate Republicans, who retained enough seats in the November elections to filibuster judicial nominees, said they have not settled on a strategy. Democrats, who successfully blocked some of President Bush's 4th Circuit and other appellate nominees, said they will try to win Republicans' support but made it clear that they will push for quick confirmations.

“There is just no question about the importance of the appellate courts, because so few decisions get up to the Supreme Court,” said a Democratic Senate source who spoke on condition of anonymity because Obama has not been inaugurated.

The Senate confirms presidential nominees to the 179-judge federal circuit courts and the 678-judge U.S. District Courts. The circuit courts of appeals, which cover the nation's 13 federal judicial circuits, decide more than 30,000 cases a year. The Supreme Court takes fewer than 100 new cases each year.