When federal District Judge Sam Sparks in early May set a trial date for Mike and Steve Yassine – the former Downtown club owners popped in March on money laundering and drug charges – there was one big question that needed answering: Could the lawyers get the entire trial over and done with in a week? If so, then Sparks could squeeze the Yassines in for the beginning of June. Otherwise he'd have to put the whole matter off until the beginning of October – and that's how it's turned out.

The issue is that Sparks' schedule is packed solid, booked months in advance – a circumstance shared not only by his colleagues in Austin's federal courthouse, but across Texas and, in fact, the nation. Indeed, with the load of federal court cases rising – 4.4% in just one year, for a total of 397,974 cases filed in 2011 – filling vacancies in the federal judiciary has not proceeded apace. Currently there are 874 federal judgeships, with 77 vacancies across the country, 64 of those on the district bench – frontline judges like Sparks and his colleague District Judge Lee Yeakel, who also was quick to mention the heavy workload when he was trying this spring to schedule a trial on a case Planned Parenthood brought against the state over its plans to cut the provider out of the Women's Health Program. If you want a trial sooner, he told the litigants, "contact your senators and get us some help" on the bench.