David Thompson Gets 9th Circuit Court Seat

David R. Thompson of San Diego, a self-described believer in judicial restraint but not a conservative ideologue, was nominated Monday by President Reagan to a newly created seat on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Thompson, 54, a graduate of USC and its School of Law, comes from a family of judges. His late father, Gordon Thompson, was a San Diego County Superior Court judge, and his brother, Gordon Thompson Jr., is chief judge of the U.S. District Court in San Diego.

Reagan Administration officials have openly declared that the President intended to balance widely perceived liberal tendencies on the 9th Circuit bench by nominating conservatives to five new judgeships created last year.

San Diego area lawyers said Monday that Thompson, whose business law practice has made him an active litigator, could be expected to provide such balance. But they added that his candidacy had broad-based support in the local bar and that he was not perceived as stridently conservative.

“Is he carrying a torch? No, he’s not,” said San Diego County Superior Court Judge Gilbert Harelson, who reviewed Thompson’s credentials as a member of U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson’s screening committee on judicial appointments.

“He’s viewed as a craftsman who is essentially apolitical,” added San Diego attorney John Davies, chairman of the screening committee. The committee gave Thompson its highest rating.

Thompson, a registered Republican, declined Monday to discuss his legal and political philosophy in detail before his confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate. He said he believes in judicial restraint but had not been questioned about his ideology during the Justice Department investigation that led to his nomination.

Gordon Thompson Jr. said his brother has “conservative inclinations,” but he would not predict how those tendencies would translate on the bench. “Until you get somebody on the bench, you really can’t tell how he’s going to look at things,” the judge said.

Richard Burt, a San Diego lawyer who also served on Wilson’s review panel, described Thompson as “a supreme gentleman.”

“He would be generally inclined to approach matters with restraint, as opposed to trying to convert the court into a legislative body and do a lot of judicial legislating,” Burt said.

The 9th Circuit, which hears appeals of cases from district courts in nine Western states, including California, has been increasingly perceived as liberal by court watchers while the U.S. Supreme Court has grown more conservative. In 1984, the Supreme Court reversed the 9th Circuit on 27 of 28 opinions it reviewed.

The Senate has held up action on Reagan’s nomination of Alex Kozinski to another 9th Circuit vacancy. Kosinski, 34, is the conservative chief judge of the U.S. Claims Court. He has been harshly attacked for his youth and his performance as special counsel of the Merit Systems Protection Board, an office designed to protect “whistle blowers” in the federal government.

Thompson, a Navy veteran, is a San Diego native and the father of three.