semper's nomination will help fill a hole in the federal courts but it does nothing to help the judicial vacancy crisis at the state level Senate President Nick scooteri pledged to call a special session this summer to consider judicial nominees but the summer came and went with no meeting and about 60 empty judgeships remaining so why isn't the crisis being met with more urgency Ted Goldberg reports legislators have long known that New Jersey is in the middle of a Judicial vacancy crisis Senator John bramnik acknowledged it almost a year ago we need to fill some more of these vacancies there's no doubt about that but there was a lack of urgency then even as the Judiciary suspended some trials and there's been little movement since May when retired Supreme Court Justice Barry Albin vented about the crisis Houston we do have a problem we're not Landing uh people on the moon here get everybody in the room get it done getting judges confirmed to Superior Court isn't rocket science but there's politics involved which has led to frustration among legal Minds Statewide that is really uh intolerable vacancies has been going on for almost four years now which is incomprehensible there are around 60 vacancies Statewide which means if you live in these four counties you can't get a divorce you can have custody hearings and you can't go into civil court families are really in crisis at this point and we we need to get judges appointed to help serve the public family attorney Candace driskula practices out of Wayne in Passaic County one of the affected areas she says most of her cases can't go forward unless her clients pay for a retired judge or someone else to serve as a mediator but there's just not that sort of resources in in Passaic County by and large so most of the families that are here are simply just at the mercy of the court system in June Senate President Nicholas Qatari said there could be an emergency Senate session to confirm judges over the summer that didn't happen and it's unclear when Governor Phil Murphy's nominees could get a hearing currently there are 18 judicial nominations like why aren't they being heard why aren't those judicial candidates receiving hearings um is this not an emergency the fact that the Senate did not reconvene in July or August as it was hoped and there was speculation from Senator scatteri and Senator stack that that may happen it didn't happen and they're just not taking it seriously senator bramnick says a special session isn't a Magic Bullet for this problem and that Governor Murphy hasn't named enough nominees for the Senate to consider a special session would be great if you had the nominees right so you could have this session and then guess what you haven't worked out who's coming before the Judiciary Committee ramnik says the answer is simple Governor Murphy says bring in the two three or four Senators that represent a district who have courtesy and you say okay everybody bring a name next Tuesday courtesy meaning senatorial courtesy New Jersey's Unwritten rule that allows a senator to single-handedly block a nominee from his or her district bramnik has supported keeping that rule while Alvin soundly rejects it there are many decisions that are being made in the shadows in the dark and this senatorial courtesy is antithetical to the Democratic process election day is two months from today giving Senators little time to confirm judges before getting ready to campaign for NJ Spotlight news I'm Ted Goldberg [Music]