Two years into his presidency, Joe Biden has already broken records with the number of federal judges hes gotten confirmed and with the diversity of his court picks. And as Democrats prepare to control the Senate for another two years, Biden is on track to make his impact on the courts a defining piece of his legacy.

Its only going to get easier for him if Democrats win in Georgias Senate runoff on Dec. 6.

The Senate has been tied at 50-50, along party lines, for the entire time that Biden has been president. Thats meant that Democrats and Republicans have had equal representation on the Judiciary Committee, where GOP members have been intentionally delaying the confirmation process for a number of Bidens court picks.

All those GOP members have to do is unanimously vote no on a nominee, causing a tie within the committee, and it keeps that nominee stuck there. Whenever they do this, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has to file a so-called discharge petition to force that nominee out of the committee and onto the Senate floor for a confirmation vote.

Every discharge petition adds four hours of wait time on the Senate floor. Thats on top of the delays that come with filing a petition at all. To date, Republicans have forced Schumer to use a discharge petition for five of Bidens court picks who went on to be confirmed. Among them: Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

There are currently four other judicial nominees two appeals court picks and two district court picks who are still stuck in the Judiciary Committee and need discharge petitions to get out.

Democrats are already set to have 50 seats in the new Senate. If Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) defeats his GOP challenger, Herschel Walker, in the coming weeks, Democrats will have 51 seats. That would mean no more power sharing on committees, no more votes tied along party lines in the Judiciary Committee and no more discharge petitions.

Georgia is highly important because we can confirm even more judges, more quickly, if we dont have to deal with all the procedural hurdles that come with a tied Senate, said Brian Fallon of Demand Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group.