Edwards Fights Bad Judges

FLOOR STATEMENT BY SEN. JOHN EDWARDS ON THE NOMINATION OF CHARLES PICKERING TO THE FIFTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS

"I rise today to speak out against the nomination of Charles Pickering to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

"I oppose this nomination because Judge Pickering has repeatedly demonstrated a disregard for the principles that protect the rights of so many of our citizens. Judge Pickering's record as a judge is full of instances in which he has elevated his personal views above the law. For example, Judge Pickering has shown a lack of respect for the Supreme Court's landmark legal precedents, especially those that protect rights. He has harshly criticized the Supreme Court's "one person, one vote" rulings and has been reversed numerous times by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals for his failure to follow "well-settled principles of law."

"In one case, Judge Pickering took extraordinary steps to reduce the sentence required by law for a man convicted of cross burning. In addition, he exerted extraordinary efforts to reduce the five-year sentence mandated by federal sentencing guidelines in the cross-burning case and went so far as to make an ex parte phone call to Justice Department officials in an attempt to assist the defendant.

"And, since his hearing, Judge Pickering has actively solicited the support of this nomination from attorneys who appear in his courtroom. This behavior not only calls into question Judge Pickering's commitment to protecting the constitutional rights of all Americans, but legal experts agree that his actions violated the canons of judicial ethics.

"Unfortunately, some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, in their drive to push through every Bush judge at all costs, have turned this process into a personal attack on the integrity and motivations of those of us who oppose this nomination. We've been accused of anti-Southern bias. Of course, anyone listening to me talk would have to figure that I'm the last person to hold an anti-Southern bias.

"We've even been accused of calling Judge Pickering a racist, something we have not done. I do not presume to know what is in Judge Pickering's heart. But I DO know what is in his record. That record proves him unfit to serve as a Court of Appeals judge.

"We have tried our best to facilitate consensus and cooperation in judicial nominations. Unfortunately, most of our efforts are being rejected, which doesn?t make a bit of sense, since we accomplish so much when we all work together.

"We've seen what happens when the President meets us halfway. He's done it before - rarely, but he's done it. He reached out to us on Allyson Duncan, an outstanding North Carolinian who just yesterday was formally installed as a judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, breaking a logjam that had held our state back for a decade.

"In that case, President Bush did more than just pay lip service to our constitutional obligation to advise and consent.. He reached out to us before he made his decision - he consulted with us - he sought our advice. And in making his decision, the President selected a nominee who represents the mainstream of our state.

"Throughout Judge Duncan's confirmation process, I commended the President for consulting with us and making an excellent nomination. And I told him that if he takes this approach to future judicial nominations we have a real opportunity to find common ground in the search for excellence on the federal bench. When we work together, we find outstanding nominees like Allyson Duncan, who represents the best of North Carolina and America.

"But rather than accept my call for consensus, the President just said NO.

"There's a saying that if you see a dog and a cat eating from the same dish, it might look like a compromise, but you can bet they're eating the cat's food. That's how things seem to be working in Washington these days. My colleagues and I have tried and tried to find common ground. We have said yes to Bush judges, time after time after time. We have said yes to more than 160 Bush judges. But but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have instead dug in their heels and demanded that unless we agree to every judicial nominee the President sends up here, no matter how unacceptable they are, WE are being obstructionist.

"We can do better than this. And we should do better. It is time for this President to stop saying NO to judges who respect our civil rights. Let's say yes to judges who will fairly apply the law. Let's say yes to judges who will not allow their extreme personal views to color their decision-making. Let's say yes to judges who will protect our civil rights. I am proud to stand with my colleagues today as we say a resounding YES to fairness, equality and justice."

As you read this email, Republican senators are stacking the deck, ramming right-wing judicial nominees through the Senate confirmation process.

Why now? Because Bush and his cronies are afraid that come next November there will be big changes in Washington, changes that will see them out of power. So they have to stack the deck now, before it's too late!

WHAT'S AT STAKE?
Recent court decisions like Bush v. Gore and on the affirmative action programs at the University of Michigan show the power the judiciary. The thousands of decisions handed down by the 13 circuit courts and 96 federal district courts make a tremendous impact on this country's direction.

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I review the judges that George W. Bush nominates. Most of his nominees are not what you and I would call "mainstream." But three in particular, Charles Pickering, Priscilla Owen and Carolyn Kuhl, want to lead this country in the wrong direction.

Each one of these judges has demonstrated a willingness to put their own views above the law.

In a case against a man convicted of burning a cross on a biracial couple's lawn, Pickering took extraordinary measures--even broke judicial ethics rules--in an attempt to reduce the man's mandatory sentence.

Owen has a long record of siding with large corporations and against victims of terrible corporate misconduct.

Kuhl's decisions have consistently demonstrated hostility toward the privacy of women and the civil rights of minorities. Kuhl spearheaded the effort to reinstate the tax-exempt status for Bob Jones University and other schools that discriminate on the basis of race.

Republicans have a 51-49 advantage in the Senate, so the only way to stop these nominations may be with filibusters--the first test of which will be tomorrow's cloture vote on Pickering's nomination.

Some Republicans are even considering the unprecedented move of changing Senate rules to bar filibusters on judicial nominees!

HOW CAN YOU HELP?
Please, sign my online petition. Forward this e-mail to your friends. Together we must stop George W. Bush from stacking the courts with right-wingers who want to discard our rights and our civil liberties.

http://join.johnedwards2004.com/campaign/civil_rights

Just added my name. This is really the most serious issue of the election.

He was brilliant when he questioned Pickering. He would not let Pickering wiggle away. YEA!
Sign the petition.

From NPR, February 8, 2002

TOTENBERG: The judge fielded all such questions with quiet, if somewhat grudging, aplomb, until Senator John Edwards of North Carolina began questioning him about a cross-burning case he handled as a trial judge in 1994. In that case, a juvenile and a mentally challenged defendant had both agreed to plead guilty and gotten lenient sentences in exchange for their testimony. But the third defendant, an adult, had refused a guilty plea and a 15-month sentence. He'd gone to trial and been convicted, whereupon the Justice Department asked for the longer mandatory minimum. Justice Department memoranda written by prosecutors in the case at the time report that Pickering threatened to order a new trial if the Justice Department did not reduce the sentence it was asking for. Pickering at first denied making any such threat, but then softened his denial.

Senator JOHN EDWARDS (North Carolina): You deny having said that.

Judge PICKERING: No, I did not say that.

Sen. EDWARDS: If the lawyers who were involved in that have said that that's the statement that you made to them, that would be a lie?

Judge PICKERING: Senator, on the record...

Sen. EDWARDS: According to the documents that we were provided, this took place in a private meeting that you had with the lawyers where you told the lawyers you would order a new trial on your own motion, and when they ask you, and I'm quoting now, "what would be the basis for such a motion for a new trial, you said that any basis you choose." Do you deny having said that?

Judge PICKERING: Senator, I have no recollection of having said that.

TOTENBERG: Senator Edwards then moved on to questions about whether Pickering had violated the judicial code of conduct, which forbids a judge to engage in what's called ex parte contact, that is contact with either side in the case without the lawyers being present.

Sen. EDWARDS: Did you make a phone call to a high-ranking Justice Department official on your own initiative?

Judge PICKERING: We had...

Sen. EDWARDS: Not 'we,' you. Did you make such a phone call?

Judge PICKERING: I've indicated I called Mr. Unger and discussed the fact I was frustrated that I could not get a response back from the Justice Department and I thought there was a tremendous amount of disparity in this sentence.

Sen. EDWARDS: Were any of the lawyers in the case on the phone when you called Mr. Unger.

Judge PICKERING: No, they were not.

Sen. EDWARDS: So that was an ex parte communication, was it not?

Judge PICKERING: It was.

Sen. EDWARDS: OK. In violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct.

Judge PICKERING: I do not consider it to be a violation of the code of conduct.

TOTENBERG: And finally Edwards asked Pickering if he'd issued an order forcing the matter to go directly to the attorney general.

Sen. EDWARDS: Did you also direct the Justice Department lawyers, the line prosecutors, to take your complaints personally to the attorney general of the United States?

Judge PICKERING: In the order, yes, sir.

TOTENBERG: The reason he'd taken such extraordinary steps to get the sentence reduced in the cross-burning case, said Pickering, was that he thought seven and a half years was unjust compared with the home confinement doled out to the other two defendants.

Judge PICKERING: I have never had a case where the disparate treatment was so great as it was in this case.

Most people don't know that federal judges are appointed FOR LIFE. Unlike Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Thompson, et al, whose serve at the pleasure of the President and who WILL go away, these bad judges will remain on the bench for a generation or more.

Bush is doing everything he can to pack the courts with extreme right wing judges. He's not only filling the seats that are becoming vacant in his term, he's also filling the seats that remained open after Republicans blocked 20% of Clinton's nominees.

This affects all of us. Most cases never get to the Supreme Court so these judges will have a significant influence on every aspect of the law. They will control a woman's right to choose, affirmative action, civil rights, rights of the disabled, civil liberties, Patriot Act, etc., etc.

People need to pay attention to this. So please spread the word!

Conservative group launches attack ad against Edwards in S.C.
Wednesday, November 5, 2003

JENNIFER HOLLAND
Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A group formed to garner political support for President Bush's judicial nominees has launched an attack ad in South Carolina against Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards.

Edwards, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was singled out in the ad campaign because the senator has staked much of his presidential campaign on his showing in the state's early primary, said Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice.

The 30-second television ad airing only in South Carolina depicts Justice Janice Rogers Brown growing up as the daughter of a sharecropper and later becoming the only black member of the California Supreme Court. Bush has nominated the conservative jurist to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

"And now John Edwards says, 'No way.' Shame on you, Sen. Edwards," the ad says.

Edwards, a North Carolina senator, is among several Democrats and civil rights, abortion, gay, minority and women's groups who oppose Bush's nominee. He said Brown would take civil rights a step backward.

"She has a record of repeatedly putting her own views above the law - views that are hostile to fundamental civil and constitutional rights and to affirmative action in particular," Edwards said in a release.

Edwards was expected to vote against Brown's nomination Thursday, his spokeswoman Jenni Engebretsen said. That could possibly scuttle her confirmation before it reaches full debate in the Senate.

Both the state and national chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People oppose Brown because she has forgotten how public education and affirmative action helped her get to where she is today, said Lonnie Randolph, president-elect of the state NAACP chapter.

"While the beginning of her story is admirable, too often people end up hating where they came from," Randolph said.

Rushton said his group, which was founded by C. Boyden Gray, a former White House legal counsel, wants to educate people across the country about Brown.

"Our ads are meant to call attention to the fact here is a good woman who we think is really inspiring ... who has risen to a prominent position and is now being nominated for the second most important court in the entire country by President Bush," Rushton said.

"John Edwards is joining in with what we regard as the liberal extremist groups in Washington to attack her instead," he said.

The ads were to air in Greenville, Columbia and Charleston television markets Wednesday through Friday, Rushton said. He would not say how much the ad campaign costs.

South Carolina is "a particularly important place for voters to be educated because it is an important primary state and because it is also a Southern state that will have an open Senate seat in the next election as well," he said.


http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/7192200.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

Remarks By
Sen. John Edwards
On The Nomination Of
Janice Rogers Brown
To The U.S. Court Of Appeals For The D.C. Circuit
Thursday, November 6, 2003


Mr. Chairman, I must voice my opposition to the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

As you know, I have voted to confirm more than 150 of President Bush’s judicial nominees. I have done so even though I have disagreed with their views and positions. Many of these judges have held conservative ideologies with which I strongly disagree. However, I voted for these nominees because I believed they would ultimately enforce the Constitution and the law.

Janice Rogers Brown is not such a nominee. Unfortunately, she holds views that threaten basic elements of our constitutional framework, as well as progress in our society over the last 70 years.

There are many examples of Justice Rogers’ extraordinary views. I will name just two.

First, she has actually said that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal "inoculated the federal Constitution with a kind of underground collectivist mentality," and that the year 1937 "marks the triumph of our own socialist revolution." This is simply extraordinary. Nineteen-thirty-seven was the year that the Supreme Court reversed course and stopped striking down New Deal legislation designed to employ the unemployed and ensure survival for the hungry and sick. And for those who forget—the New Deal was not socialism; the New Deal was measures like Social Security that helped forestall more radical economic changes. Justice Brown apparently not only disagrees with the New Deal, which would be one thing. What is truly troubling is that she suggests the Supreme Court would have been right to continue striking down New Deal protections instead of upholding them. This is not even the view of Justice Scalia. It is far outside the mainstream of judicial thought today, liberal or conservative.

Next, at her confirmation hearing, Justice Brown was asked whether the United States Constitution would trump a state referendum, California’s proposition 209. As we all know, the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution is the basis of our form government. It was only because the U.S. Constitution is the highest law of the land that the Supreme Court had the power to strike down racial discrimination in schooling. Yet Justice Brown, for whatever reason, was unable or unwilling to state unequivocally that the U.S. Constitution would override a state referendum. I find this extraordinary.

These statements are unfortunately consistent with Justice Brown’s record as a judge. For example, she has said that a rent-control statute, which you can reasonably agree or disagree with, amounts to "turning a democracy into a kleptocracy." This kind of rhetoric is amazing. And her record of dissents in California is consistent with this rhetoric. She has undermined civil rights remedies and shown hostility for workers’ rights in ways inconsistent with settled law and precedent.

Now, I have heard the unfortunate attacks by some of those who are pushing for her confirmation. In fact, I’ve even been singled out personally. I take a backseat to no one in my commitment to civil rights and equal justice. It is because of those commitments that I oppose Justice Brown’s nomination.

Much has been made of Justice Brown’s personal history. I commend and admire her for how far she has come in life. But this isn’t about her personal history. This is about her record and the views she would espouse as a judge on a critical federal court.

This nomination is very important to me because it has an enormous impact on the constituents of my home state and neighboring states. The D.C. Circuit is widely regarded as the second most powerful court in the country. With special jurisdiction conferred by Congress, the D.C. Circuit oversees the actions of federal agencies. The Supreme Court’s limited caseload means that the D.C. Circuit often provides the determinative legal review of federal agency action involving labor relations, affirmative action, clean air standards, health and safety regulations, consumer privacy and campaign finance. The D.C. Circuit has another especially critical role in protecting the voting rights of African Americans and other minority citizens, particularly in Southern jurisdictions, including my home state of North Carolina. Even you, Mr. Chairman, have called it "the most important circuit in the country."

So, this nomination is very important to me and my constituents. This was another missed opportunity by the President, who, instead of selecting a consensus nominee who would uphold the notions of civil rights and equal justice, sent one more divisive nominee who will move us backward.

For these reasons, I have no choice but to oppose Justice Brown’s nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

just so we could see Edwards take him/her apart. Boy, that would have been fun.