During President Bill Clinton's first and second terms of office, he nominated 24 people for 20 federal appellate judgeships but the nominees were not processed by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee.
Three of the nominees who were not processed (Christine Arguello, Andre M. Davis and S. Elizabeth Gibson) were nominated after July 1, 2000, the traditional start date of the unofficial Thurmond Rule during a presidential election year.
Rather, Durham, a conservative jurist whom Clinton nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as part of a deal with then-Washington Sen. Slade Gorton, withdrew because of illness.
[94] In its November 1997 issue, the American Spectator reported that President Clinton had intended to nominate Teresa Wynn Roseborough in 1997 to a vacant seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit after Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch took senior status.
The American Spectator noted, however, that Sen. Orrin Hatch, the then-chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, had "balked" at the idea of Roseborough, who was one of four finalists (the others were Leah Ward Sears, Clarence Cooper and Frank M. Hull) and had "suggested that a more moderate Clinton-appointed U.S. district judge, Frank Hull, would have clear sailing."