Judge Selya assumed senior status at the end of 2006. Then Senator Lincoln Chafee recommended that former Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice Robert Flanders be nominated to replace Selya. President George W. Bush interviewed Flanders, U.S. District Judge William E. Smith, and Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice Paul A. Suttell for the position, before selecting Judge Smith as the nominee. Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asserted that, due to the President's failure to work with Whitehouse and fellow Democratic senator Jack Reed in selecting a consensus candidate, the vacancy left by Selya's departure would not be filled during Bush's tenure. On October 6, 2009, President Barack Obama formally nominated Ojetta Rogeriee Thompson to Selya's seat on the First Circuit. She was confirmed by the Senate in a 98–0 vote on March 17, 2010. In 2022, Selya's career of 36 years was said to be the longest in the history of the first circuit. Writing style As a private practitioner, Selya was often lulled to sleep by the legalese and boilerplate rhetoric in judicial opinions, a matter he has sought to remedy since ascending to the bench: "I made a commitment to myself that I would attempt to prove that sound jurisprudence and interesting prose are not mutually exclusive." Selya disclaims "lexiphanicism for its own sake." For Selya, precision is a precondition for his use of a word, and "[i]f it does not fit, I won't submit." Selya aspires toward readability by using uncommon words in contexts that make the words' meanings clear; and apart from his vocabulary, Selya's prose is notable for its readability and its avoidance of clotted or formulaic legal rhetoric. It is clear that Selya is widely read by his colleagues. Over the years 1998–2000, Selya numbered as the fourth most cited federal judge outside of the Supreme Court, as measured by the number of citations to his opinions from outside of his own circuit. Occupying the three positions above Selya were Judges Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook, and Sandra Lynch. Selya's writing style is not without its critics. Boston attorney Harvey A. Silverglate has written that his opinions are "well known" for their "remarkably judgmental but politically naive language," and that "[i]t is not unusual to see Selya gratuitously criticize, in sarcastic and sometimes grandiloquent fashion, a party or witness. He has earned a reputation for tossing around both his power and trademark one-hundred-dollar words." Notable opinions