Senate Confirms|Federal Judge for Oregon

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - The Senate on Monday confirmed Multnomah County Judge Michael J. McShane to the U.S. District Court for Oregon.

McShane, 52, has been on the Multnomah County bench, in Portland, since 2001.

He will fill the judgeship vacated in September 2011 when U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan assumed senior status.

The Senate refused to vote on McShane's nomination last year, so President Obama renominated him in January.

McShane, who is on the faculty of Lewis and Clark Law School, began his legal work in the Public Defender's Office in Portland. He graduated from Gonzaga University in 1983 with a degree in English and from Lewis and Clark's Northwestern School of Law in 1988.

There are 66 vacant judgeships in U.S. district courts and 16 vacancies on U.S. Courts of Appeals. Republicans have repeatedly refused to vote on nominations, or blocked them, and President Obama has not made much of an issue of it.

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