On Tuesday, when President Obama made the unusual gesture of personally introducing his three nominees for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he said that Americans would consider it a “judicial crisis” if the Supreme Court were similarly shortstaffed. The president did not come right out and say it, but he should have: The severe breakdown in the process for approving federal judges in the Senate has been especially hard on that critically important appeals court.

That breakdown has largely been caused by Senate Republicans, who want to minimize Mr. Obama’s impact on a federal judiciary still dominated by their party’s appointments, most of which were made by President George W. Bush. By singling out the District of Columbia Circuit through sabotage of previous nominations, and by threatening to reduce the court’s size to forestall new Obama appointees, Republicans have caused something not far from a crisis in our constitutional system.

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Senators Mitch McConnell and Charles E. Grassley have contended that in making this trio of nominations, the president is “court-packing,” as if he were improperly adding seats to the court. The president responded directly to that bogus claim. “We’re not adding seats here,” he said. “We’re trying to fill seats that are already existing.” It is Mr. Grassley who wants to change the size of the court, by eliminating the three seats for which the president has just made nominations, so Republican-appointed judges can maintain influence on a court that often rules on important regulatory and governmental issues.

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One of the president’s new nominations is for the seat the chief justice vacated, which has remained unfilled since he went to the Supreme Court eight years ago. As Mr. Obama said Tuesday, “Democrats weren’t completely blameless when I was in the Senate.” But he also said, correctly, “What’s happening now is unprecedented.” His judicial nominees have waited three times longer to get confirmation votes than those of Mr. Bush.