Leahy runs roughshod over esteemed judge’s nomination
- Jul 31, 2007 - 1
He has been rated by the American Bar Association (ABA) as “unanimously well qualified” and lauded by a home-state senator as one who “will serve the Fifth Circuit with distinction,” but that has done little to help convince a Senate committee to permit even an up-or-down vote on this judge nominated to serve on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judge Leslie Southwick, a man whose accolades are well complemented by a distinctive legal career and military service in Iraq, was nominated in January to the New Orleans-based court by President Bush. Yet his confirmation stands in jeopardy as the Democrat-led Senate Judiciary Committee has so far blocked an up-or-down vote. Approval by the committee is needed before the full Senate can cast its vote.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who took the reigns of the Judiciary Committee in January, stated in no uncertain terms then how he intended to proceed with judicial nominations, yet his treatment of Judge Southwick suggests otherwise.
In January, he acknowledged the multiple serious judicial needs on the courts, explaining, “I hope to expeditiously address some of these emergency vacancies in the Judiciary Committee.” Also, he has said the views of home-state senators would be honored to a greater degree. In these matters, the Senate has historically deferred to a nominee’s home-state senators. Further, he called the ABA’s evaluation “the gold standard by which judicial candidates are judged.”
The Southwick nomination meets all these conditions and more. The Administrative Office of the Courts lists the Fifth Circuit vacancy as a judicial emergency. His home-state senators, Thad Cochran and Trent Lott, have described Southwick, respectively, as “extremely well qualified” and one who “will serve the Fifth Circuit with distinction.” And the ABA has even increased his rating from “well qualified,” when nominated to a district court in 2006, to “unanimously well qualified,” when nominated to the Fifth
Circuit.
Still, Sen. Leahy and others seem to think that’s not good enough. The chief points of contention are two court decisions supported by Judge Southwick—two decisions among roughly 7,000 cases in which he participated—that lead his critics to allege the judge is racist and hostile to homosexuals.
In the first case, Judge Southwick has been labeled a racist for siding in 1998 to uphold a state administrative board’s refusal to dismiss a public employee who used an offensive racial slur in the workplace, a decision the state supreme court later affirmed as well. Notably, Judge Southwick did not write the opinion and said during the testimony that the racial slur in question is “always offensive” and “inherently and highly derogatory.”
Throughout his career he has been committed to equal justice under the law.
The second cause for alarm, according to his opponents, is that he joined an opinion in 2001 that used the phrase “homosexual lifestyle,” wording viewed as anti-homosexual. Ironically, that very phrase is common in American legal opinions and was used in similar fashion by liberals on the U.S. Supreme Court in its Lawrence v. Texas decision, as well as by President Bill Clinton when announcing his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in 1993.
Interestingly, none of the senators or special interests groups who are leading the attacks on Southwick considered this information noteworthy when he received a lifetime appointment to a federal district court in 2006.
Attacks against nominees for the Fifth Circuit judgeship are nothing new. Charles Pickering, nominated to that bench in 2001, and Michael Wallace, nominated in 2006, were both denied an up-or-down vote by Democrats, even as their home-state senators lauded the two men.
The courts are in desperate need of honorable, strict-constructionist judges like Judge Southwick. If you believe judicial nominees should be given the courtesy of an up-or-down vote, please tell your senators to allow a vote on Judge Leslie Southwick.
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1 comments (post your own) feed
1 On Aug 14th, 2007, at 11:44pm, Helen Hare wrote:
It is what we can expect and what has happened with the democratic congress. Stand in the way of everything that our nation needs, that is good and right, and keep things in turmoil. HH