A murky future awaits the congressional nominating commission's finalists on Tuesday for the two open federal district court judgeships in the Southern District of Florida, along with the next U.S. magistrate judge and U.S. attorney.

Carl Tobias is a professor at the University of Richmond who studies federal judicial selection. He said when Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and former Democratic Sen. William Nelson were both in office, they worked effectively on filling these roles instead of the current predicament in which the state finds itself.