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Statement of Senator Patrick Leahy
On the Nomination of Judith Herrera
To the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico
June 3, 2004
Today the Senate is proceeding to confirm Judith
Herrera to the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico.
Ms. Herrera is a partner with the Santa Fe firm of Herrera, Long,
Pound & Komer, which she co-founded in 1987. She appears in court
frequently on behalf of employers, and their insurance companies,
serving as defense counsel in employment discrimination and wrongful
discharge cases. Before starting this practice, she handled education
cases and also served briefly as a local prosecutor. She also
previously served on the Sante Fe City Council. She has the support
of both of her home-state Senators.
Democratic support for the confirmation of Ms.
Herrera, an active Republican, is yet another example of our
extraordinary cooperation in this presidential election year. Today’s
confirmation will make the 180th judicial nominee to be confirmed
since this President took office. With 80 lifetime judicial
appointments confirmed in just the past year and a half alone, the
Senate has confirmed more federal judges than were confirmed during
the all of 1995 and 1996, when Republicans first controlled the Senate
and President Clinton was in the White House. It also exceeds the
two-year total for the last Congress of the Clinton Administration,
when Republicans held the Senate. This Senate has now confirmed more
federal judges than were confirmed during either Congress leading to a
presidential election with a Democratic President and Republican
Senate majority in 1996 and 2000.
This marks the 180th judicial
confirmation since President Bush took office. That is more than
President Reagan, the acknowledged all-time champion, achieved in his
entire four-year presidential term from 1981 through 1984 working hand
in hand with a Republican Senate majority. It is more than President
Clinton was able to achieve in his entire four-year presidential term
from 1993 through 1996, having to work with a Republican Senate
majority during 1995 and 1996.
I have already noted that at the Republican
Senate leadership has again chosen to avoid debate of the nomination
of J. Leon Holmes and Judge Dora Irizarry. These two district court
nominees have been pending on the Senate floor longer than any of the
other pending district court nominees. Just so that there is no
confusion, that is the choice of the Republican Senate leadership to
skip those nominations.
The Holmes nomination will require significant
debate. It was sent by the Judiciary Committee to the floor without
recommendation, a highly unusual circumstance. That means that there
was not a majority vote in Committee to report the nomination
favorably. The Committee disserved the Senate by not doing its job of
fully vetting the nomination and reaching a consensus or even a vote
on the merits.
With regard to Mr. Holmes, to excuse widely
shared misgivings about this nomination partisan Republicans are
falsely claiming that the opposition to him is based on his religion.
That is a slander. Nonetheless, right wing groups like the Committee
for Justice have run outrageous and false ads and propaganda against
Democrats and have posted assertions that Democrats are anti-Catholic.
Ms. Herrera is, of course, another among the
scores of judicial nominees we have confirmed who are active in their
faith. Ms. Herrera has stated in her Senate Questionnaire that she is
on the Board of Directors of the St. Michael’s High School Foundation,
a local Catholic high school, and she is a parishioner at St. Francis
Cathedral. It is wrong for Republican partisans to seek political
benefit by falsely claiming that Democrats are anti-Catholic and
insulting for them to claim that Catholic Democrats are somehow not
Catholic enough. Senator Durbin just released a study this week that
shows that Democrats actually vote more often in agreement with the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on domestic and international
issues than their counterparts across the aisle. Yet the destructive
Republican politics of division persist. These are unfortunate and
dangerous schemes that will only further divide our people and our
nation. Anna Quindlen’s recent column in Newsweek, Casting the First
Stone, captures the heart of this current tendency to mix religion and
politics into a concoction that some Republican strategists hope will
help them at the ballot box. I ask unanimous consent that this
editorial be printed in the Record.
I also want to focus briefly on how Republicans
continue to delay consideration of some Hispanic judicial nominees.
For some time the only Hispanic nomination of this President to the
first 42 circuit court vacancies was the ill-fated nomination of a
young man whose record was kept from the Senate by the Bush
Administration and who was opposed by the Congressional Hispanic
Caucus, prominent Latino leaders of the civil rights community and by
many others. This single nomination was in sharp contrast to the many
Hispanic nominees sent to the Senate by President Clinton. In fact,
eight of the Hispanic jurists serving on our circuit courts today were
named by President Clinton, and at least three other Clinton Hispanic
circuit nominees would be sitting on the bench now if they had not
been denied consideration by a Republican-controlled Senate.
When Democratic Senators supported the
confirmation of Judge Edward Prado, President Bush’s nominee to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Senate Republican
leadership delayed consideration of that nomination for a month on the
floor for no good reason, other than to allow us to vote on this
Hispanic nominee would undercut their false charges that Democrats
were anti-Hispanic. Judge Prado had a fair record, years of
experience as a federal District Court judge, and broad support from
both sides of the aisle. Nonetheless, in order to get Judge Prado a
vote, I had to come before the Senate on a number of occasions to urge
his consideration because the Republican leadership was delaying final
Senate consideration of his nomination.
Now the Republican leadership seems to be
returning to its earlier ways and is again passing over Hispanic
nominees without explanation. Last October, seven months ago, the
Senate Judiciary Committee favorably reported the nomination of Judge
Dora Irizarry of New York to be a United States District Court Judge
for the Eastern District of New York. This was not a nomination
without some controversy. The American Bar Association accorded her a
majority rating of “not qualified,” as it has several of this
President’s judicial nominees. Nonetheless, the Judiciary Committee
held a hearing on her nomination. The Members of the Committee
examined the nomination on the merits and reached their own judgment.
With the support of Senator Schumer of New York, the nomination was
favorably reported. While Senate consideration will include some
brief debate, there is no reason this matter has not been scheduled
and considered in the last seven months. It could easily have been
considered during the course of an extended quorum call during any one
of the many days when there is no significant business taking place on
the Senate floor. As I have reiterated for months, there is no
Democratic hold on this nomination. It merits a brief discussion, but
we are prepared to vote on it. Republican delay has prevented action
on this nomination.
I do not recall this lengthy a delay in
scheduling debate on a Latina nominee since the untoward Republican
obstruction of Senate consideration of President Clinton’s nomination
of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit in 1999. That nomination of an outstanding judge, who had
been appointed to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush, was
delayed for more than 400 days in all and waited seven months on the
Senate floor, before we were able to force action and a vote on her
confirmation. According to some accounts, she was delayed over
Republican concerns that she would be chosen by President Clinton for
the Supreme Court if a vacancy arose.
Likewise, the Senate’s Republican leadership has
not yet scheduled a vote on the nomination of Ricardo S. Martinez to
be a United States District Court Judge for the Western District of
Washington or Juan R. Sanchez to be a United States District Court
Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Despite Republican delays in the consideration of
President Bush’s Hispanic nominees, the Senate has already confirmed,
unanimously, three of his Hispanic nominees to the circuit courts and
11 to the district courts. Ms. Herrera will be the 12th
Latino district court nominee and 15th overall confirmed by
the Senate.
Unfortunately this White House’s commitment to
diversity seems shallow when compared to its devotion to ideological
purity. The President has nominated many more members of the
Federalist Society than members of the nation’s fastest growing ethnic
group. The White House has sent over the nominations of more than 45
individuals active in the Federalist Society, which is more than twice
as many Latinos as he has nominated. In fact, the President has
chosen more individuals involved in the Federalist Society than
Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans combined.
We have made significant progress over the last
three years in reducing federal judicial vacancies. As of today,
there are only 43 total vacancies in the federal court system. That
stands in sharp contrast to the treatment Republicans accorded
President Clinton’s nominees. Indeed, under Republican leadership,
from 1995 to the summer of 2001 the number of vacancies in the federal
courts rose from 63 to 110. We have now made up that 67 percent
increase in vacancies the Republican Senate leadership had engineered
between 1995 and 2001, and we have reduced vacancies from the 1995
level by one third, to the lowest vacancy level in 14 years. In spite
of the way more than 60 of President Clinton’s nominees were defeated
by Republicans’ objections, Senate Democrats have cooperated in the
consideration and confirmation of 180 of this President’s judicial
nominations.
We now have 16 vacancies in the circuit courts.
That is the number of vacancies that existed when Republicans took
majority control of the Senate in 1995. Unfortunately, through
Republican obstruction of moderate nominations by President Clinton,
those circuit vacancies more than doubled, rising to 33 by the time
Democrats resumed Senate leadership in the summer of 2001. We
steadily reduced circuit vacancies over the 17 months that Senate
Democrats were in charge. Even though since 2001 an additional 15
circuit vacancies have arisen, we have done what Republicans refused
to do when President Clinton was in the White House by not only
keeping up with attrition but actually working to reduce vacancies.
We have now reduced circuit vacancies to the lowest level since before
Republican Senate leadership irresponsibly doubled those vacancies in
the years 1995 through 2001.
We should recognize the progress we have made. I
certainly recognize the entirely different approach to judicial
nominations Republicans have taken with a Republican President’s
nominations in contrast to their systematic obstruction of Senate
action on President Clinton’s judicial nominations. I would hope that
we will be able to find ways to work together without too much more
delay to consider the Hispanic nominees to the federal bench who
Democrats are supporting.
I congratulate Ms. Herrera and her family on her
confirmation today.
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