Senate Confirms Joseph Greenaway to 3rd Circuit

Joseph Greenaway has become the 15th Obama  judicial nominee to win Senate confirmation.  His nomination was cleared by the Senate judiciary committee in October, after being nominated last June, but Republican resistance to Obama’s nominees has stalled final confirmation.  There have been no objections to Greenaway from either side of the aisle on competence or ideology and it appears that the delay was merely knee jerk opposition to the President.

Greenaway has been described as a centrist and even won praise from Alabama’s Jeff Sessions after Greenaway reaffirmed past comments he made in opposition to judicial activism.  He will take the seat vacated by Justice Alito, after Alito’s appointment to the Supreme Court.  In the four appeals from Greenaway’s lower court cases that Alito ruled on while sitting on the appellate court, Alito voted to uphold three of them, and Alito took a more liberal line than Greenaway on the fourth.

Greenaway was first appointed to the federal bench in 1996 by President Bill Clinton.