Opening Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy
Executive Business Meeting Of The Senate Judiciary Committee
October 23, 2003

This week the Committee is considering a number of presidential nominations.

Yesterday, the Committee held its 20th judicial confirmation hearing this year. In our 17 months in the majority, Democrats worked hard to confirm 100 judges, and in a little over 15 months, the Republican majority has confirmed 66. They are clearly working harder than during the years President Clinton was in office and the Republican majority held an average of only eight hearings a year, as compared to the 20 already this year. So far this year this Committee has considered 76 nominees in hearings and the Senate has confirmed 66, as compared to the 38 per year average when there was a Democrat in the White House.

At yesterday’s hearing number 20 we heard from another controversial nominee, Janice Rogers Brown, nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. With our confirmation earlier this year of Judge John Roberts, we have already confirmed more judges for the D.C. Circuit than Republicans were willing to consider in the last three years of the Clinton Administration.

Today on the agenda we have another of the more than two dozen judicial nominees by the President who have received peer reviews from the ABA that include a "not qualified" or partial "not qualified" rating. The nomination of Judge Dora Irizarry has not been without controversy or negative editorial opinion from New York papers.

We finally have on the agenda a nominee to a bipartisan commission, the U.S. Sentencing Commission selected in a bipartisan manner. Senator Hatch and I wrote jointly to the President to recommend the reappointment of Judge Sessions to the Commission.

Before us today is also the DREAM Act, an initiative that Senator Durbin and Senator Hatch have championed and many members of the Committee have supported, and one that deserves to be reported out. Also on the agenda is a matter on which Senators Levin and Schumer have been working for some time to provide background checks on private security guards.

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