GOP Picks Up the Pace on Judicial Nominees

Senate Republicans served notice Wednesday they will move rapidly to confirm President Bush’s court nominees, as the GOP-led Judiciary Committee took up six prospective judges, including three whose hearings had been stalled by Democrats.

“What you consider to be a ‘rush’ to hearing does not comport with most people’s sense of that word,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) told Democrats who complained that he had scheduled too many controversial nominees at once.

It took 11 years for Washington attorney John G. Roberts, 48, a well-regarded Supreme Court advocate, to get a hearing. In 1992, the first President Bush nominated Roberts, then the deputy U.S. solicitor general, to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. But the Democrat-led panel did not take up his nomination, and it expired when President Clinton took office in 1993.

When President Bush took office two years ago, his first group of judicial nominees included Roberts. But soon after, the Democrats regained control of the Senate, and took no action on his nomination.

“He is widely considered to be one of the premier appellate litigators of his generation,” Hatch said, noting that Roberts had argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court. “If Mr. Roberts is considered controversial, I don’t know who may survive the label.”

Hatch’s committee also took up two Ohioans who were chosen for the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. They are Ohio Supreme Court Justice Deborah Cook, 50, and attorney Jeffrey S. Sutton, 42, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Disability rights advocates packed the small hearing room to protest Sutton’s nomination, forcing the committee to move to a larger room in the Dirksen Building. Sutton, as a state lawyer for Ohio, made a specialty of arguing, and winning, states’ rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

He won a pair of 5-4 rulings in which the court shielded state agencies from being sued for damages by employees who said they were discriminated against because of a disability or their age. The setback for the disabled came in the case of a nursing supervisor who was demoted after she battled breast cancer.

“Sutton’s career has been highlighted by aggressive -- and often successful -- efforts to dismantle federal disability rights and civil rights protections,” said Jim Ward, president of the National Coalition for Disability Rights.

When pressed on the issue, Sutton stressed that he was representing a client -- in these cases, a state agency. If confirmed, Sutton said he would be devoted to “the rule of law, not a former client.”

The liberal Alliance for Justice said the three appeals court nominees “are part of the administration’s strategy to pack the courts with extremists.” People for the American Way also called for the defeat of Sutton and Cook.

But Hatch stressed that the nominees were highly qualified and had the support of their home-state senators.

The committee also took up three nominees to be federal trial judges, including Los Angeles Superior Court Judge S. James Otero. He has support from Democrats and Republicans, and senators said he would easily be confirmed to be a U.S. district judge in Los Angeles.

Hatch set the first vote on a disputed judgeship for today. The hearing will be for Miguel Estrada, a Washington lawyer and favorite of conservatives, who was chosen for the D.C appellate court.