Statement Of Sen. Patrick Leahy,
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee,
On Judicial Nominations
January 30, 2007
Today the Senate is considering the first judicial
nominations of the year. If these nominees are confirmed, it will be
the 101st and 102nd while I have served as Judiciary
Committee Chairman under this President. If confirmed, these nominees
will bring the total number of President Bush’s nominees confirmed
during his tenure to 260.
Last Thursday, the Judiciary Committee held its
first business meeting of the year. We were delayed a few weeks by the
failure of the Senate to pass organizing resolutions on January 4, when
this session first began. The Republican caucus had meetings over
several days after we were in session before finally agreeing on January
12 to S. Res. 27 and S. Res.28, the resolutions assigning Members to
Senate committees.
The Judiciary Committee has traditionally met on
Thursday. Regrettably, the delay in Senate organization meant that I
could not notice or convene a meeting of the Committee the morning of
January 11, as I had hoped. We devoted the intervening Thursday to our
oversight hearing with the Attorney General. January 18 was the date
the Attorney General selected as most convenient for him, and we
accommodated him in that.
Accordingly, it was last Thursday that we were
first able to meet. At our first meeting, I included on our agenda the
nominations of five men and women to lifetime appointments as federal
judges. Three were for vacancies that have been designated judicial
emergencies by the Administrative Office of the Courts. Before
proceeding, I inquired of each Member of the Committee whether a hearing
was requested on these nominations this year. They were each nominees
we had considered in the Committee last year. They were returned to the
President without Senate action when Republican Senators objected to
proceeding with certain nominees in September and December last year.
Last week I thanked the Members of the Judiciary Committee for working
with me to expedite consideration of these nominations this year. In
particular, I extend thanks to our new Members, the Senators from
Maryland and Rhode Island.
All five nominations were not sent to the Senate
until January 9. We have moved promptly to vote to report them on
January 25 and now begin the process of final Senate consideration. I
know from last year that Senators Chambliss and Isaakson are strong
supporters of Ms. Wood’s nomination to fill the emergency vacancy in
Georgia. I appreciate that they have both worked with me and am
delighted that hers is the first nomination to be considered by the
Senate this year.
The second nomination we will consider is that of
Philip S. Gutierrez, another nominee to a seat deemed to be a judicial
emergency. He has been nominated to the U.S. District Court for the
Central District of California after a distinguished career in private
practice and as a Los Angeles County Superior and Municipal Court
judge. While on the Superior Court, Judge Gutierrez served as a
founding member of the Judicial Ethics Committee, which developed a
curriculum for ethics training for every California judicial officer,
and devoted significant time to improving the court system statewide.
Judge Gutierrez, a Los Angeles native, is a graduate of the University
of Notre Dame and UCLA Law School.
This new Congress presents an opportunity for a
fresh start on judicial nominations, one that emphasizes qualifications
and bipartisan consensus over political game-playing by the other side.
President Bush made the right decision in not resubmitting this year
several controversial and troublesome nominees who failed to win
confirmation from a Republican-controlled Senate. Of course it is
unfortunate that we lost many months of valuable time on those failed
nominations. We spent far too much time engaged in political fights
over a handful of nominees in the last Congress, time the Senate could
have spent making progress on filling vacancies with qualified consensus
nominees.
I do wish the President had gone further and
renominated three nominees for vacancies in the Western District of
Michigan who were reported out of Committee, but left pending on the
Senate’s Executive Calendar when some on the other side of aisle blocked
the nomination of Judge Janet Neff for one of those seats. All three
nominations were for vacancies that are judicial emergency vacancies –
three in one federal district. The Senators from Michigan had worked
with the White House on the President’s nomination of three nominees to
fill those emergency vacancies. The Judiciary Committee proceeded
unanimously on all three. Working with then-Chairman Specter, the
Democratic Members of the Committee cooperated to expedite their
consideration. On September 16, we held a confirmation hearing for
those three nominees on an expedited basis and reported them out of
Committee on September 29.
Regrettably, rather than meet to work out a process
to conclude the consideration of judicial nominations last session, the
Republican leadership apparently made the unilateral decision to stall
certain of these nominations, including those for the judicial
emergencies in the Western District of Michigan and, in particular, the
President’s nomination of Judge Janet Neff. After the last working
session in October, I learned that several Republicans were objecting to
Senate votes on some of President Bush’s judicial nominees. According
to press accounts, Senator Brownback had placed a hold on Judge Neff’s
nomination, even though he raised no objection to her nomination when
she was unanimously reported out of Judiciary Committee. Later, without
going through the Committee, Senator Brownback sent questions to Judge
Neff about her attendance at a commitment ceremony held by some family
friends several years ago in Massachusetts. Senator Brownback spoke of
these matters and his concerns on one of the Sunday morning talk shows.
I wondered at the end of the last Congress whether
it could really be that Judge Neff’s attendance at a commitment ceremony
of a family friend failed some Republican litmus test of ideological
purity, that her lifetime of achievement and qualifications were to be
ignored, and that her nomination was to be pocket filibustered by
Republicans.
I do not know why the President has not chosen to
renominate Judge Neff or the other two Western District nominees. But
the approach to nominations we saw in the last Congress, of using
nominations to score political points rather than filling vacancies and
administering justice, has led to a dire situation in the Western
District of Michigan. Judge Robert Holmes Bell, Chief Judge of the
Western District, wrote to me and to others about the situation in that
district, where several judges on senior status—one over 90 years
old—continue to carry heavy caseloads to ensure that justice is
administered in that district. Judge Bell is the only active judge. If
not for Republican objections, these nominations would be filled by now.
I urge the President to fill these and other
outstanding vacancies with consensus nominees. The Administrative
Office of the U.S. Courts list 59 judicial vacancies, 28 of which have
been deemed to be judicial emergencies. So far in this Congress, the
President has sent us 30 judicial nominations. There remain 17 judicial
emergency vacancies -- 17 -- now without any nominee at all.
We continue to make progress today towards filling
longstanding judicial vacancies. If the President consults with us and
works with us to send consensus selections instead of controversial
nominations for important lifetime appointments, we can make good
progress filling vacancies.
The American people expect the federal courts to be
fair forums where justice is dispensed without favor to the right or the
left. I intend to do all that I can to ensure that the federal
judiciary remains independent and able to provide justice to all
Americans.
These are the only lifetime appointments in our entire government, and
they matter. I will also continue in the 110th Congress to
work with Senators from both sides of the aisle, as I have with Senators
Chambliss and Isaakson as well as Senators Feinstein and Boxer. I
congratulate Ms. Woods and Judge Gutierrez on their confirmations today.
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