Democrat-Led Senate Panel Meets Final Time, OKs 2 Judges

The Senate Judiciary Committee, in its last meeting under Democratic control, raised its 98% approval rate for President Bush’s judges by clearing two more on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Dennis Shedd of South Carolina, a protege of retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), won a narrow vote to serve on the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Shedd’s nomination was held up last month when civil rights groups, led by the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said the 49-year-old judge had regularly ruled against plaintiffs in discrimination cases.

Also Thursday, University of Utah law professor Michael McConnell, 47, won easy approval to serve on the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. A well-regarded conservative legal scholar, McConnell drew the backing of 300 legal academics, many of them liberals.

After clearing the committee on a voice vote, the nominations now go to the full Senate for final confirmation.

The clash over judges flared after Democrats took a one-vote control of the Senate last year.

Bush campaigned throughout the country against Democrats for obstructing his choice of judges, and the Republican victories last week should make for smooth sailing for his nominees in the year ahead.

But outgoing committee chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said much of the criticism had been unfair and exaggerated.

Before Thursday’s vote, the committee -- where Democrats held a slim 10-9 majority -- had taken up 100 of Bush’s nominees since Democrats assumed control, and approved 98 of them.

Two were rejected as too conservative. They were U.S. District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. of Mississippi and Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen. Last week, GOP leaders said they will revive those nominations.

In the 16 months of Democrat control, 80 of Bush’s judicial nominees won final approval on the Senate floor, and that number may go up today.

For 30 months before July 2001, Republicans held the majority, including during President Clinton’s final two years in office. In that time, 72 judges won Senate approval.

“Our committee was able to achieve more on judicial nominations in 16 months than had been achieved in the previous 30 months,” Leahy said.

But White House lawyers say statistics alone do not tell the tale. Typically, a new president wins easy approval of nearly all his initial nominees to the federal bench. Shortly after taking office, Bush announced 11 nominees to the U.S. appeals courts. Nine of them were conservatives with solid credentials. Two were black Democrats who had been nominated earlier by Clinton: judges Roger Gregory of Virginia and Barrington Parker Jr. of New York.

Bush and his advisors saw this as a goodwill gesture that would speed the confirmation process. Instead, Leahy’s committee quickly confirmed Gregory and Parker, but stalled on most of Bush’s other choices.

They included four attorneys who argue regularly in the Supreme Court: John Roberts and Miguel Estrada from Washington, Jeffrey Sutton from Ohio and McConnell from Utah.

Only Estrada and McConnell were given hearings before the committee, and only the Utah law professor came up for a vote.

Leahy had pledged to hold votes on McConnell and Shedd, another of Bush’s initial nominees, and Thursday’s lame-duck session redeemed that promise.

Shedd’s nomination divided the committee until the end.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the former and future committee chairman, said Shedd was well known and well liked, as he had worked in the past as a lawyer for the committee. “His work habits, integrity, honesty and temperament were beyond reproach,” Hatch said.

But Leahy cited a long series of cases in which Shedd ruled against discrimination plaintiffs. Often, he threw out the lawsuit before it could go to a jury.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said nearly 30% of those who live in the mid-South region served by the 4th Circuit are black. “I believe Judge Shedd is not a strong supporter of civil rights,” she said, adding that she opposed elevating him to the appeals court.

Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) had pressed Shedd to name a single case during his 12 years on the bench in which a discrimination plaintiff prevailed. “No one, according to his own testimony, claiming to be a discrimination victim had been successful in his court,” Edwards said, adding that he too would oppose Shedd.

All the Democrats who were present voted no, while all the Republicans voted yes. But because the absent Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) did not object, Leahy said the panel on a voice vote had agreed to send Shedd’s nomination to the floor for final approval.

Conservative activists applauded the committee’s belated approval of the two Bush nominees.

“This is long overdue,” said John Nowacki of the Free Congress Foundation. “After 18 months, Sen. Leahy has run out of excuses to keep stalling, but it’s a shame that it took last week’s election losses to prod the committee into action.”

“We’re hopeful today’s action signals the beginning of a fast-track approach to approving President Bush’s nominees,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice.

Liberal activists said they were dismayed that Democrats cleared the two nominations to go forward.

“What a lousy end to the year,” said Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice.

Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, said the GOP gains in last week’s midterm elections do not “represent a mandate to pack the courts with right-wing ideologues.”