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U.S. SENATOR PATRICK
LEAHY
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CONTACT: Office of Senator
Leahy, 202-224-4242 |
VERMONT |
Statement of Senator Patrick Leahy
Ranking Democratic Member, Judiciary Committee
Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee
September 22, 2004
Pilot
Project on Closed Captioning
This afternoon’s nomination hearing marks a
technological milestone for the Senate. Today the Senate Judiciary
Committee officially begins broadcasting live on the Senate television
system with closed captioning that uses the advanced technology of
voice-recognition software. We have been eagerly awaiting this day when
hearing impaired Americans will be able to follow the proceedings of this
Committee as they occur through closed captioning.
Working with the Office of the Secretary of the Senate
and with the Committee on Rules, the Judiciary Committee has developed a
pilot project that will allow us to study the captioning of committee
hearings, offering real-time captioning as a demonstration for the use of
Senators and their staff. We are very proud of the Judiciary Committee’s
groundbreaking role in testing this new technology. I want to thank
Senator Hatch for agreeing to work with me on this project.
Through this pilot project, we are helping the Senate
determine the feasibility of providing real-time captioning for all Senate
committee hearings. We hope to bring closer the day when Americans with
impaired hearing will have access to the legislative process, which often
occurs in the committees and not only on the floor of the Senate.
Today’s launch is particularly noteworthy coming at a
time when we see barriers being erected all around Washington. We are glad
for this opportunity to actually bring down a barrier between the American
people and their government.
Sentencing Commission Nomination
This week, at long last, the President has finally
sent the Senate a nominee for the remaining vacancy on the United States
Sentencing Commission. I thank Senator Hatch for expediting the hearing
on this nomination.
The nonpartisan nature of the Sentencing Commission is
preserved by making sure it is balanced and includes experienced
Commissioners who stick to the merits and command the respect of both
Congress and the Judiciary. Our nominee today is just such a person.
Beryl Howell was a tough federal prosecutor who earned a number of
commendations for her actions. She was the deputy chief of the narcotics
section and Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York
until she consented to join the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee in
1993. She served here with great distinction and earned the respect of
Republicans and Democrats alike. As my General Counsel, she devoted
herself to resolving issues on the merits and was a tremendous asset to the
Committee as we considered legislative challenges. No challenge we faced
was greater than the one we met in the weeks following September 11, 2001.
She led our Senate staff’s negotiations with the Administration. Had the
White House not reneged on some of the commitments they made in the course
of our negotiations, the PATRIOT Act would have been a better, more
balanced bill.
She has gone on to become highly successful as the
managing director and general counsel of the Washington, D.C. office of
Stroz Friedberg, LLC, one of the leading cybersecurity and forensic firms
in the country.
Appointments to the Sentencing Commission have enjoyed
a tradition of bipartisanship.
President Clinton worked
long and hard at reaching a compromise with Senate Republican leaders on a
slate of nominees to this important Commission. Seats went unfilled for
too long while a Democratic White House negotiated with Majority Leader
Lott and Chairman Hatch. Finally, in late 1999, we were able to get
agreement from the Republican caucus and nominations went forward. Instead
of honoring this tradition and doing what President Clinton had done,
President Bush did not consult with Senate Democrats initially. It has
taken some time but now, finally, the President has accepted a
recommendation from the Democratic leader for this vacancy created by the
resignation of Judge Diana Murphy. I thank Senator Daschle, Senator
Kennedy and all Democratic Senators for their support for this nomination.
With this nomination, the Committee and the Senate should be in a position
to proceed promptly to confirm all the outstanding nominations to the
Sentencing Commission as a package.
The
Commission has important work to do. Especially in light of the Blakely
decision and the Supreme Court’s expedited consideration of follow-up cases
that will affect the federal sentencing guidelines, we need to have the
expertise and authority of the Commission in place and working in the weeks
and months ahead.
Retirement of Sheila Joy
Finally, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge
a woman has been involved in the judicial nominations process since I
joined the Senate. Sheila Joy is a career civil servant at the Department
of Justice who is retiring this month after 26 years working on nominations
and 37 years in public service. Whether the man in the White House was a
Democrat or a Republican, Sheila Joy served the public by assisting and
advising judicial nominees on their papers for their Senate Judiciary
Committee hearings for more than a quarter of a century. Her non-partisan
advice about FBI and ethics issues, as well as history and precedent, has
been relied upon by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigators and
counsel over these many years.
We appreciate that very much. It is literally true
that Sheila has written in the official history books of the United States,
recording the names and outcomes -- confirmed or blocked -- of every
judicial nomination of Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and the current
administration. She knows every lifetime appointed judge serving in the
federal courts today and she knew them when they were humble nominees. She
has served our country well and I commend her. I think it will be
impossible for anyone to fill her shoes, with her breadth of experience and
wisdom, but I wish her a wonderful and relaxing retirement.
Republican Double Standards for Judicial Nominations
Today marks another unfortunate milestone, however, in
the way that Republicans have employed double standards for judicial
nominees depending on the political affiliation of the President. From the
way that home-state Senators are treated to the way hearings are scheduled,
to the way the Committee questionnaire was altered, to the way our
Committee’s historic protection of the minority by Committee Rule IV has
been violated, the Republican Senate leadership has destroyed virtually
every custom and courtesy that used to help create and enforce cooperation
and civility in the confirmation process. Their actions have contributed
to the extended debate on controversial judicial nominees.
They have also demonstrated time and again that the
rules they used to insist upon when Democratic Presidents occupied the
White House do not apply to Republicans.
Today, less than six weeks before the presidential
election, the Committee is holding a hearing on a lifetime appointment to a
seat that does not become vacant for more than eight weeks after the
November election. It is another extension of their power for Republicans
to insist the Senate consider nominees for positions that will not even
arise until after the presidential election. When a Democratic President
was seeking reelection in 1996, the Senate Republican leadership did not
consider or confirm a single judicial nominee after the August recess
despite scores of existing and longstanding vacancies. That session Senate
Republicans only allowed 17 judicial nominations to be confirmed and they
did not include a single nominee to the Courts of Appeals. How the rules
have changed with the political affiliation of the occupant of the White
House.
There remain just 27 vacancies in the federal district
and circuit courts combined, and there are more active judges sitting on
the bench than at any time in this nation’s history. The Senate has
already confirmed 201 of this President’s judicial nominees and reduced
vacancies to the lowest level in decades.
In 1996, when a Democratic President was seeking
re-election, the Republican leadership allowed only one hearing to consider
one district court nominee after the August recess, and then never allowed
that nominee to have a Committee vote. Indeed, that nominee, Judge Ann
Aiken of Oregon, was obstructed so severely by the Republican majority that
she was not confirmed to her position until nearly a year and a half
later. In September 1996, Republicans said: “[T]he fact of the matter is
that both sides realize this process somewhat collapses really at the end
of August, and it certainly has during presidential years because both
sides are hoping that their candidates will win the presidency.”
In 2000, the Republican Senate leadership insisted on
following the Thurmond Rule. After the August recess work on judicial
nominations came to a halt. Although there were over 30 nominees pending,
after July 25, 2000, no more judicial nominees were scheduled for hearings
or considered by the Committee. A leading Republican observed: “I have
never seen an end of a session in a presidential year that is highly
charged where there weren’t people who couldn’t get through at that point,
where you just don’t stop the process.” In September 2000, when the
vacancy rate was around seven percent, Republicans proclaimed that the
judiciary was not suffering and that nominees would not move so late in the
presidential election year. Today, the vacancy rate stands at around three
percent, less than half of what it was in September 2000, after Republicans
had shut down hearings for judicial nominees.
In both 1996 and 2000, Senate Republicans did not
allow a single individual nominated after July 21st to be
confirmed to the federal courts – even for seats that were long vacant.
When Kent Markus of Ohio was nominated in February 2000 to the Sixth
Circuit, he was told by Republicans that it was just too late. Today’s
hearing is for an individual nominated on July 22, 2004 to fill a district
court seat that will not be vacant until December 31, 2004. Today’s
hearing is unprecedented but not surprising given the reversal of so many
positions the Republican majority had followed during years in which the
President was from another political party.
The Senate has already confirmed four of President
Bush’s district court nominees and two of his circuit court nominees from
Ohio, including some who were problematic. Deborah Cook, now on the Sixth
Circuit, is a staunch Republican and Federalist Society member who was one
of the Ohio Supreme Court’s most prolific and activist dissenters in favor
of corporate interests. She was promoted by the
Senators from Ohio and was confirmed last year. Another Sixth Circuit
confirmation, Jeffrey Sutton, is an active Federalist Society member
and one of the most controversial of President Bush’s nominees confirmed.
Prior to his confirmation to a lifetime appointment on the nation’s second
highest court, Judge Sutton sought out opportunities to attack federal
civil rights laws and limit Congress’ ability to protect individual
rights. He received enough “negative” votes to have sustained a
filibuster, but he was not blocked on the floor.
The Senate also confirmed four Ohio district court
nominees, many of whom were active members of the Republican Party in Ohio
and whose records were somewhat troubling. Michael Watson was just
confirmed by the Senate earlier this month.
We moved forward with those nominations even though
two of President Clinton’s nominees to Ohio, Kent Markus and Steve Bell,
were blocked during Republican control of the Senate. Neither received a
hearing or a vote. Professor Markus was nominated to the Sixth Circuit in
February 2000, but was told it was just too late. Steven Bell was
nominated in August 1999 to the district court in Ohio and waited for more
than a year without receiving a hearing.
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