It has now been over four months since President Obama’s inauguration. But the President has yet to make his appointments in Mississippi for U.S. Attorneys, U.S. marshals and the vacant federal district judge position. Here is a link to a National Law Journal Article that discusses the appointment process for U.S. Attorneys.

There are a total of ninety-three U.S. Attorney positions in the nation. According to the article, state Democrat leaders have made forty recommendations for U.S. Attorneys to the White House with only six appointments so far. Of the forty recommended, the Justice Department has conducted required screening interviews of only twenty. A former Bush administration official explained that the process takes a long time to complete:

Fulbright & Jaworski partner Michael Battle, former director of EOUSA during the Bush administration, said the speed of the process depends on the layers of local-level vetting, as well as the mechanism for identifying potential candidates, which varies by state. “It takes the better part of six, eight, 10 months, as the White House gets more comfortable with doing this,” said Battle. “It just takes time.”

Based on this statement, it could be this fall before the appointments of Mississippi’s two U.S. Attorney and marshal slots.

As for the district judgeship position that is presumably going to Jackson attorney Carlton Reeves, the article sheds indirect light on the process. The article states that the White House rejected Republican pleas to be included in the appointment process in states like Mississippi that have two Republican senators. This suggests that Senators Cochran and Wicker will not be involved in the process and, therefore, unable to block the appointment of a Democrat such as Carlton Reeves. It seems likely that Democrat leaders have already recommended Reeves and that the vetting process is underway. With a summer recess looming for Congress, however, Reeves will probably not take the bench until sometime this fall at the earliest.