News
Government
Feb. 22, 2002
Cooperative Efforts in Other States Fall Short
LOS ANGELES - California's two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, announced with great fanfare the formation of a bipartisan committee to recommend judicial candidates to fill the state's eight U.S. District Court vacancies.
The idea was to eliminate the partisan rancor that has stalled federal judicial appointments in the past - sometimes for more than four years as in the case of Richard Paez's confirmation to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles.
But a look at two other states that have formed, or attempted to form, similar committees yields a questionable outlook on whether the great experiment is working.
In Wisconsin, the two Democratic senators, Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold, teamed up last July with Republican Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., to form an 11-member commission responsible for making recommendations for federal bench vacancies.
The state has used such a process since 1979, and, according to Kohl spokeswoman Lynn Becker, it does work. Last year, the commission forwarded three names to the White House for a new federal seat in Green Bay, and Bush nominated one, Brown County Circuit Judge William C. Griesbach.
But partisan snipping among commission members over the recommendations has so frustrated the White House that the administration may not want to "go through this circus again," Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Then there's the highly publicized flap in Washington state that prompted White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to question the feasibility of the bipartisan process altogether.
The rift between the state's two Democratic senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, and senior Republican Rep. Jennifer Dunn occurred after Dunn did away with the state's long-standing bipartisan board at a time when the Republicans controlled the Senate. After Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican majority to become an Independent, throwing control to the Democrats, Dunn still couldn't agree with the senators on how a bipartisan panel would work.
Meanwhile, Dunn's panel recommended veteran litigator Ronald Leighton for a federal bench vacancy in Tacoma, and last month, President Bush nominated him. Bush's father previously nominated the Republican candidate, but the Senate failed to act before the former president left office.
Murray and Cantwell protested to Gonzales, saying that they refused to support any nominee who did not come through a bipartisan process.
In a Dec. 12 letter to the senators, Gonzales responded that the administration saw no good reason for Bush to start the process anew for the current nominee.
Moreover, Gonzales wrote, the administration "is not generally supportive of bipartisan commissions."
"Bipartisan commissions intrude substantially on the president's power of nomination, which the Constitution expressly assigns to the president alone," Gonzales wrote. "In addition, we are now convinced, based on our experience, that bipartisan commissions do not uniformly produce the most highly qualified candidates for the federal judiciary."
#337655
Susan Mcraen
Daily Journal Staff Writer
For reprint rights or to order a copy of your photo:
Email
Jeremy_Ellis@dailyjournal.com
for prices.
Direct dial: 213-229-5424
Send a letter to the editor:
Email: letters@dailyjournal.com