Court Nominee Warfare Opens

Nan Aron says she does not like to be in the same room with Tom Jipping, let alone have her photograph taken with him.

“He’s not my favorite person,” she said.

Nonetheless, the two have been showing up in the same news stories for more than a decade, offering point-counterpoint comments on prospective federal judges.

Aron, 53, heads the liberal Alliance for Justice, a coalition of advocates for civil rights, civil liberties, labor, women’s rights and the environment.

Jipping, 40, heads the judicial selection project for the conservative Free Congress Foundation, which is supported by dozens of groups on the right, including those who champion family values, property rights, gun ownership, home schooling and antiabortion issues.

Next week, when the Senate Judiciary Committee holds its first confirmation hearing for President Bush’s judicial nominees, both activists will be working hard--and against each other--to put their stamp on the federal courts. Already, the rhetoric is heating up.

“He is trying to placate the right-wing base of his party,” Aron said of Bush’s first round of court nominees. “No president has a mandate to appoint people who are hostile to civil rights, individual liberties, privacy, health and safety or the environment.”

The Democrats, who narrowly control the Senate, should go slowly, she advised, and closely scrutinize Bush’s nominees.

Jipping is urging Senate Democrats to stop stalling and confirm Bush’s nominees because they are well qualified to be judges.

He characterizes the focus on nominees’ ideology as similar to cheating. “Judges are supposed to follow the law, not make it,” he said. “We should stop picking judges based on politics.”

But “Nan Aron and the leftist organizations she represents want judges who will deliver a political agenda,” Jipping said.

Aron and Jipping not only have opposite views on what makes a good judge, but they also offer consistently contradictory advice to the Senate.

During the Clinton administration, Aron urged the Senate, then under Republican control, to quit stalling and to approve the president’s nominees.

“It’s time for fair-minded senators to challenge the delaying tactics” of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and his allies, she wrote two years ago, when Hatch was chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

At the same time, Jipping was denouncing President Clinton’s nominees as “liberal activists” and urging Republican senators to block them.

Now Jipping is calling on the Senate to get moving, while the alliance in May put out a statement on Bush’s nominees headlined, “Not So Fast!”

It’s not clear what will happen this year. Under rules approved last week, a senator will no longer be able to secretly block a nominee from his or her state. The Judiciary Committee, now controlled by Democrats, will disclose the name of a senator who has put a hold on a judicial nomination.

And while Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) says he has no intention of blocking all or most of Bush’s nominees, he stresses that they will get careful scrutiny.

With 104 vacancies on the federal bench and the possibility that one or more Supreme Court justices could retire during Bush’s term, the politics of judicial selection is sure to be as heated as ever.

During Clinton’s eight years as president, 374 of his judges were confirmed, and only one, Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White, was defeated. The vast majority of these were trial court judges, however.

Because of the blocking actions of a handful of conservative Republicans, at least 20 of Clinton’s appeals court nominees, nearly a third of the total, never got a final vote. Others won approval only after long delays. Judge Richard Paez of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals won confirmation last year after a four-year wait.

Away from Senate hearing rooms, the conservative and liberal activists use different tactics in the ideological war over judges.

Jipping’s group shuns publicity and relies on a network of conservative activists to work mostly behind the scenes with Republican senators.

Aron and her allies, on the other hand, seek through public information campaigns to turn a national spotlight on the fight over judges.

Aron founded the alliance in 1979 and concentrated on judicial nominations early in the Reagan administration.

In the summer of 1987, Aron’s group fueled the liberal fire that scorched Judge Robert H. Bork, Reagan’s failed Supreme Court nominee.

Others, such as Ralph Neas, now president of People for the American Way, led the public attack on Bork, but Aron’s staff of committed young lawyers supplied much of the ammunition.

On the day that Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991, the alliance had nine file drawers labeled “Clarence Thomas.”

Aron had guessed correctly that then-President George Bush, when faced with the resignation of the first African American justice, would feel compelled to appoint an African American to replace him. And the only black judge sitting on the U.S. appellate court who had been appointed by Reagan or Bush was a 43-year-old rookie on the D.C. court of appeals: Judge Clarence Thomas.

For the rest of the summer, Aron’s group served as the source for dozens of news stories that raised questions about Thomas’ speeches, writings and his record as chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Before the Senate hearings, Aron advised staff aides that they should check out allegations from one former EEOC attorney that Thomas had harassed her by making crude comments. In October, the nation learned her name: Anita Faye Hill.

Of course, Thomas survived and won Senate confirmation on a 52-48 vote. Jipping, who rallied support for Thomas, considers his confirmation one of the great moments of his career.

It is unclear who will be at the center of the next battle over a judicial nomination, but Aron and Jipping will surely be key players.