Clinton Nominates L.A. Judge to U.S. Appeals Court : Law: Respected trial jurist is expected to win Senate confirmation as the first Japanese American on the 9th Circuit panel.

President Clinton has nominated A. Wallace Tashima, a highly regarded Los Angeles federal trial judge, to a coveted position on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

If Tashima is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, which is considered likely, he would be the first Japanese American and only the third Asian American to serve on the 9th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over federal appeals in nine western states, including California.

“I’m very gratified and at the same time somewhat humbled,” Tashima, 60, said Sunday in an interview at his Los Feliz area home.

Being the first Japanese American nominated for the prestigious position has particular resonance for him, he said, in part because he and his family, among thousands of Japanese ancestry, spent more than three years in an internment camp during World War II.

“Increasing diversity on the bench is very important. In spite of everything we say and do, there are still many instances of discrimination in our society,” Tashima said.

Indeed, his nomination was announced within days of New York Republican Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato’s highly publicized use of a feigned Japanese accent on a radio talk show in reference to Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito.

Tashima declined comment on the incident, other than to take note of D’Amato’s public apology and to express mystification at why the lawmaker, an Italian American whose own ethnic group has been the subject of discrimination, would express such sentiments.

A native of Santa Maria whose family moved to Los Angeles when he was 3, Tashima graduated from Roosevelt High School and UCLA. After a stint in the Marine Corps, he graduated from Harvard Law School, worked in the California attorney general’s office and had a successful career as a corporate lawyer before he was appointed to the federal district bench in Los Angeles by President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Tashima’s nomination to the appeals court was lauded by a broad spectrum of judges and attorneys, including current and former prosecutors, civil libertarians, lawyers for large corporations, leaders of Asian American bar organizations and law professors.

Perhaps the most telling praise was offered by Los Angeles lawyer Ronald L. Olson, who specializes in complex civil cases in which millions of dollars are at stake. He said Tashima had ruled against him in two of three recent major cases, including last year’s battle over landing fees at Los Angeles International Airport. Olson nonetheless considers him an excellent jurist.

“It’s a fabulous appointment,” Olson said. “He has the composite of talents that are needed for a great judge--intelligence, the patience to learn, strong analytical skills and the ability to make hard decisions. He not only knows the law, but he always digs to get at the facts to see how the law should apply in the particular case. And he’s not stymied by ideology,” Olson added.

“Almost anyone drawing Tashima on a case would be happy,” said Paul L. Hoffman, former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “He’ll pay attention to what you write and say and come to a reasoned judgment.”

On and off during the 1980s, Hoffman spent several years in Tashima’s courtroom, litigating a massive Freedom of Information Act case on behalf of Frank Wilkinson, longtime director of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee and its successor organization.

Ultimately, Wilkinson got access to 120,000 pages of documents--many of them showing that federal and local authorities had spied on him and infiltrated his group. Federal authorities fought hard to keep the documents out of his hands.

“During the case, the rulings went both ways, but Judge Tashima displayed a keen sensitivity to 1st Amendment values, and that’s been borne out by subsequent cases,” Hoffman added.

He mentioned particularly the 1992 “NEA 4” case, in which Tashima struck down as unconstitutional a federal law requiring the National Endowment for the Arts to consider “general standards of decency” when awarding taxpayer-supported grants for the arts.

“He’ll be terrific on the 9th Circuit,” said Tashima’s colleague, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson, a Reagan appointee. “You won’t be able to necessarily predict how he will come out on a particular case, except you can be sure that the decision will be well reasoned.”

Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson and USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky both predicted that as a moderate Democrat, Tashima would face little difficulty being confirmed. That is a foremost consideration for the Clinton Administration now that the Senate has a Republican majority. The Judiciary Committee is headed by conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, who has made it clear that particularly liberal nominees would be unlikely to get through the Senate.

For his own part, Tashima said he is not nervous about the coming confirmation process. “I know of no particular group that would be opposed to me.”

Among those most pleased by Tashima’s nomination was Los Angeles defense lawyer Michael Yamaki, former president of the Japanese-American Bar Assn. of Los Angeles.

“It’s been a long time coming. What would it have been like to have someone such as Wally on the bench when federal judges were considering the constitutionality of blanketly imprisoning Japanese American citizens during World War II?” Yamaki mused.

Santa Monica attorney Bryan Sun, immediate past president of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Assn., an organization that has been critical of the failure of Clinton, George Bush and Ronald Reagan to appoint more Asian Americans to the federal bench, echoed those sentiments.

“I’m delighted about Wally’s appointment; he’s built a solid reputation in his 15 years on the bench as a levelheaded judge,” said Sun, a former federal prosecutor.

The nomination also came as welcome news to Tashima’s potential future colleagues, who have been concerned about Clinton’s failure to nominate judges for the four 9th Circuit openings, one of which has existed for more than two years.

In January, six 9th Circuit jurists, led by Carter appointee Stephen Reinhardt, took the rare step of criticizing Clinton for failing to fill the vacancies expeditiously.