Tag Archives: Topic: Nominations

Ed Whelan reports at Bench Memos: Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and ranking Senate Judiciary Committee member Chuch Grassley have sent a strong letter . . The ABA presents itself to the public as a non-partisan, professional organization. However, it has chosen to advocate for this Administration’s circuit court nominees in the few remaining months before this presidential election, when it chose not to do so before either of the last two presidential elections despite much more compelling circumstances. This sort of selective advocacy is precisely why so many people question the ABA’s professed neutrality.

The Blog of the Legal Times: A Republican senator is blocking a confirmation vote for a District of Columbia Superior Court judicial candidate, a nomination that has been stalled almost a year.

Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy: id the ABA ever urge the Senate to confirm nominees during the Bush Administration? Not as far as I can tell

Blog of the Legal Times: The American Bar Association sent a letter to Senate leaders yesterday expressing a “grave concern” for the high number of longstanding federal judicial vacancies. The group urged floor votes on three noncontroversial appellate court nominees this month.

Findlaw: U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert E. Bacharach has support from his home state senators and a “unanimously well qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, but he doesn’t have enough Republican support in the Senate to be confirmed for the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals before November, reports The Oklahoman.

Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy: Professor McConnell suggested the solution is to agree on a set of rules for nominations that take effect at some point in the future so that it would not be clear would benefit from the new rules. [I’ve endorsed a similar idea.]

National Journal: Grassley faulted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., for moving to a voice vote rather than holding a planned roll call vote on Hurwitz. But Grassley’s gripe seemed to lie largely with members of his own party who agreed to the switch, particularly Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who managed the nomination

VerdeNews: Arizona voters are being asked to give Gov. Jan Brewer and her successors more power to choose who they want to serve as judges. Proposition 115 would sharply alter the process voters approved in 1974, which has special screening panels review would-be judges for the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals and the superior courts of Pima and Maricopa County.

The Hill (includes video): “All the business of the Senate is based upon trust between one senator and another,” Grassley said on the Senate floor. “When the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee isn’t notified of this action or any other senator notified of this action, it seems to me that that trust has been violated.

The HIll: The Senate confirmed Andrew David Hurwitz for the 9th Circuit Court on Tuesday.

Washington Post: Leaders of Richmond’s five biggest law firms are urging the city’s Circuit Court judges to do what the General Assembly would not: Appoint an openly gay man to the bench.

Philly.com: The special-interest groups that derailed reform of statewide judicial elections, which most Pennsylvanians say they distrust, claimed that they were fighting to preserve citizens’ right to vote.

SCOTUS Blog: The Obama Administration’s second-ranking advocate before the Supreme Court, principal deputy U.S. Solicitor General Sri Srinivasan, was nominated by President Obama on Monday to a seat on the D.C. Circuit Court.

Blog of the Legal Times: Magistrate and administrative law judges made up the bulk of applicants vying to fill retiring District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Linda Davis’ seat on the bench.

Washington Post: Eng does not get paid by the nominees themselves. He works on behalf of the bar associations that represent Asian American, black and Native American lawyers that endorse the nominees, and helps them devise strategies for how to present those nominees to lawmakers and the public.

Blog of the Legal Times: Obama chose Srikanth Srinivasan, principal deputy solicitor general of the United States, and Caitlin Halligan, general counsel for the New York County District Attorney’s office.

LifeNews: Republican Sens. McCain, Kyl, Alexander, Brown, Snowe, Collins, Lugar and Murkowski voting with Democrats to allow the pro-abortion nomination to move ahead.

Legal Times: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wants to force a vote on U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit nominee Andrew Hurwitz early next week, setting up a potential fight with some Republicans who oppose him because of his history with Roe v. Wade.

Honolulu Star Advertiser: Gov. Neil Abercrombie appointed this afternoon Circuit Judge Richard Pollack to a 10-year term to the Hawaii Supreme Court.

NY Daily News: Bill Clinton confirmed Tuesday night for the first time longtime speculation that he offered then-Gov. Mario Cuomo a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bloomberg: New Jersey Democrats rejected Governor Chris Christie’s second straight state Supreme Court pick, citing concerns about the nominee’s lack of courtroom experience and his intent to recuse himself from same-sex marriage issues.

Charleston Gazette: Stephanie Dawn Thacker donned her vestment Tuesday afternoon as the first West Virginian woman to sit as a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

NewsOK.com: Robert E. Bacharach and John E. Dowdell will get another chance on June 7 for a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee

LifeNews: Republican senators received a letter today urging them to not support David Hurwitz, President Obama’s pro-abortion nominee to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

NorthJersey.com: His nomination has yet to be heard, but already Democratic leaders have dismissed the first openly gay man picked for the Supreme Court, civil rights advocates are softening their support for him and Republicans are left struggling to prevent a second rejection of Governor Christie’s nominees.

U.S. Senate website vote results.

Washington Post: When the four Republicans running for U.S. Senate in Virginia gather for their third and final debate Friday, they’ll have before them a brand-new issue: gay judges.

WhiteHouse.gov: Today, President Obama nominated Thomas M. Durkin to serve on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Religion Clause Blog: According to a press release issued on Thursday by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom two new appointments to the 9-member Commission have recently been made.

Metropolitan News-Enterprise: Senate Democrats said yesterday that they will try to end debate Monday on the nomination of Los Angeles attorney Paul J. Watford to serve as a judge of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On their web page, the party conference said that Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had filed a cloture petition, and that a vote likely will occur at about 5:30 p.m.

White House: Matthew W. Brann, of Pennsylvania, to be United States District Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, vice Thomas I. Vanaskie, elevated. Malachy Edward Mannion, of Pennsylvania, to be United States District Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, vice A. Richard Caputo, retired.

InsideNova.com: Allen said he hadn’t heard all of the arguments for or against Thorne-Begland, but his inclination would be to overlook sexual orientation. “What I’d look at as far as judges is, I’d look at their qualifications. As far as judges are concerned, sexual orientation is not one of their criteria for being a judge,” Allen said during a campaign stop in Prince William County on Tuesday evening.

Jonathan Adler reports on the current state of nominations at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Richmond Times-Dispatch (video): The House of Delegates’ rejection early Tuesday of a judgeship for Richmond prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland, who would have been the first openly gay person elected to the bench in Virginia, retrained the spotlight on a General Assembly session rife with controversy over social issues.

Washington Post: Thorne-Begland, the deputy commonwealth attorney for Richmond, has been nominated to serve as a judge for the city’s 13th General District Court . . . “The question is, will his personal political agenda take precedent over Virginia law and the Constitution?” the Family Foundation statement reads. “Is he going to uphold laws he clearly and very publicly disagrees with? What does he believe is the role of the courts in moving in a more ‘progressive’ direction?”

LA Times: The Senate confirmed Jacqueline H. Nguyen of Los Angeles to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, making her the first Asian American woman to sit on a federal appellate court

Washington Post: The three are Jacqueline H. Nguyen for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California, John Z. Lee for a district court seat in Illinois and Kristine G. Baker for a district court seat in Arkansas.

Washington Times: An aggressive White House drive to move stalled judicial nominees through the Senate is galvanizing activists on the left for an election-year fight to fill the bench with President Obama’s picks while Republicans are vowing to block what they view as Democratic overreach.

NewsOK.com: The nominations for two long-vacant judicial positions may soon go before a Senate committee now that Sen. Tom Coburn has given the green light. The White House has struggled to find judicial candidates that meet with the approval of Oklahoma’s senators.

Blog of the Legal Times: Lee has voted against all of President Barack Obama’s nominees as a response to Obama’s controversial recess appointments to consumer and labor boards in January. And he didn’t back down today.

Clarion Ledger: Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves is blocking a state Board of Health nomination because the nominee has ties to the state’s only abortion clinic, The Associated Press confirmed Tuesday.

Blog of the Legal Times: The Senate confirmed Brian Wimes as a U.S. District Judge for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri on Monday night, part of an agreement to vote on 14 judicial nominees before May 7.

NY Times: Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana has argued that he voted for Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagen and Sonia Sotomayor because other nominees would have been more liberal, said Richard Mourdock, state treasurer and Lugar’s Republican primary challenger on Monday afternoon at a Federalist Society candidate forum.

Ed Whelan at National Review Bench Memos: As I put it, the nominations provided “ample evidence that Christie didn’t just take ‘diversity’ into account but elevated it above essential considerations of judicial philosophy.”

Portland Press Herald: The trial lawyer from Cape Elizabeth wins strong support as his 1st Circuit nomination heads toward a final floor vote.

Reuters: Now that Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, the names of people he might appoint to the U.S. Supreme Court are starting to roll off the tongues of conservative activists, lawyers and former Republican administration aides.

CNBC: Romney formed a committee of lawyers in August 2011 to advise him on court nominations and on legal policy questions led by prominent conservatives such as Robert Bork, whose conservative views led Democrats to block his 1987 nomination to the court.

Washington Times: Escalating a simmering constitutional feud, Senate Republicans on Tuesday said they’re joining a lawsuit against President Obama’s January recess appointments, which were made even as Senate Republicans said they were still in session.

West Virginia Record: West Virginia attorney Stephanie Thacker has been confirmed to a federal appeals court. The U.S. Senate voted 91-3 in favor of Thacker to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Monday evening.

The Hill: In return, Republicans allowed passage by unanimous consent of several of President Obama’s noncontroversial nominees . . .

Blog of the Legal Times: Nominees Richard Taranto for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and Robin Rosenbaum for the Southern District of Florida were approved with a voice vote, and only one vote against each. The committee also voted 10-6 to approve Gershwin Drain for the Eastern District of Michigan . . .

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch at Human Events: The Constitution may say what the people want it to say, but today it often means what judges want it to mean. Liberty is a casualty of this judicial takeover. But there is hope. While we do not elect federal judges, we do elect those who appoint them.

IndyStar.com: Mark Massa began his legal career as a clerk for Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall Shepard.

Blog of the Legal Times: The Senate confirmed Rudolph Contreras today as a U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia, becoming the second Latino to serve on D.C.’s federal district court.

NJ.com: Faced with a state Supreme Court nomination in jeopardy and hearings a day away, the Christie administration countered critics of both nominees Tuesday with the endorsement of an advisory panel he had hand-picked.

Washington Post: The First Lady says here that Obama’s appointees to the Supreme Court will uphold the right to “love whomever we choose.”

San Francisco Chronicle: A day after Senate leaders ended a deadlock blocking Obama administration judicial nominations from moving forward, the Senate this afternoon approved Michael Walter Fitzgerald to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The Portland Press Herald: A Senate panel quizzes Portland attorney William Kayatta Jr., Obama’s choice for an appeals court seat.

Legal Times: After months of backlog and partisan recrimination, Senate leaders reached an agreement to move forward with judicial nominees this afternoon that assures 12 federal district court judge picks and two circuit court selections will get confirmation votes before the summer.

LA Times: Republican Tom Coburn wants to end the partisan battles over judicial confirmations, saying ‘presidents are entitled to their nominees.’

National Journal reports.

The Hill: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) charged Republicans on Monday of gumming up the judicial confirmation process in order to embarrass President Obama, and said he plans to file cloture to force votes on 17 of the outstanding nominees in the near future.

Idaho Statesman: DeMint, who voted last fall for two Obama judicial choices from South Carolina, said he’s now rejecting all of the president’s nominees to protest his winter recess appointments of four controversial nominees to avoid GOP opposition.

AP: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has moved to end a Republican filibuster against 17 judicial nominees, using a parliamentary maneuver that would limit debate time if he can get 60 votes.

Hispanic Business: Mitt Romney’s attacks continue — this time in a a radio ad in Ohio attacking his GOP opponent Rick Santorum for his 1998 vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the federal circuit court.

American Judicature Society: During the summer of 2011, The American Judicature Society conducted a nationwide survey of Judicial Nominating Commissioners.  Nominating Commissions exist in 36 states and the District of Columbia to recruit, screen, evaluate, and recommend individuals for appointment to the state courts. The survey was designed to gather information about the membership, rules, procedures, practices, and effectiveness of Judicial Nominating Commissions from those who know it best – the Commissioners.  This information can be used to better understand how current systems operate and to evaluate proposals that would alter existing merit selection systems or institute new ones

Telegraph: Britain’s next judge on the European Court of Human Rights will be chosen from a three-strong shortlist of candidates, including a prominent human rights lawyer and a veteran of the Strasbourg court, it has emerged.

Sacramento Bee: There’s even loose talk of putting off votes as long as possible, in hopes that Obama loses in November and the seats can be filled by a Republican president. That’s absurd.

LifeNews: A Senate committee voted Thursday for the latest pro-abortion nominee President Barack Obama has appointed to the nation’s highest courts.

Great Falls Tribune: Human rights groups and several congressional leaders called on Montana Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull on Thursday to step down in light of the federal judge forwarding a racist email about President Barack Obama to several of his friends

Philly.com: The House Judiciary Committee is considering two bills, HB 1815 and 1816, sponsored by Rep. Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, that would set up a merit-selection system to fill vacancies for the state’s appellate posts – Supreme Court justices and Superior and Commonwealth Court judges.

Politico: It’s a fight Democrats are eager to have — even as they blame Republicans for focusing too much on social issues.

AZ Republic: Andrew Hurwitz, vice chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, was approved Thursday on a 13-5 vote of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee as a candidate for a vacancy on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

National Review Bench Memos: President Obama’s controversial decision to force employers to violate their conscience makes it pretty clear that “playing offense” means taking the most extreme steps to enforce Planned Parenthood’s priorities. But if there were any doubt about how far that offensive reaches, the President’s recent nomination of Andrew Hurwitz to the Ninth Circuit should clarify it.

Life News: . . . this time a lawyer credited with helping craft the Roe v. Wade decision. He appointed Andrew Hurwitz to the 9th Circuit Court, the most liberal appeals court in the country based in San Francisco and covering laws approved in western states.