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Press Office - Floor Statements
DOLE URGES ACTION ON JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS
Says important principles are at stake
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May 23rd, 2005 - Mr. President, before I speak to the important principles at stake in this debate, I want to take this opportunity to thank the Majority Leader for doing everything in his power to avoid the impasse we face today.
We have arrived at this moment in the Senate’s history not because of a failure of effort, but because of a failure of cooperation.
Over the past two years, Senator Frist and other members of the Republican leadership have made compromise an important objective.
We have repeatedly offered to extend the period of debate on the President’s judicial nominees. 50 hours, 100 hours, have been offered – even 200 hours of debate on some of these nominees—all in an effort to ensure that our Democrat colleagues have sufficient time to raise and explain their concerns. Without exception, these offers to provide more time have been rejected out-of-hand.
In May of 2003, Senator Frist and then-Senator Miller of Georgia introduced compromise legislation that would allow the filing of successive cloture motions on judicial nominees, with each motion requiring fewer votes for passage, and ultimately a simple majority. When it came time to consider this sensible legislation in the Rules Committee, my Democrat colleagues boycotted the mark-up.
In April of 2004, the current Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Specter, introduced legislation to help remove politics from the judicial confirmation process and ensure that nominees would be given a hearing, that they would be reported out of committee, and would receive a vote on the Senate floor. The Democrats reacted to this proposal with silence.
Senator Frist has been in regular communication with Senator Reid, and on March 17th
of this year, he formally wrote to Senator Reid expressing his hope that a compromise could be fashioned, and indicating that the constitutional option would only be exercised if there were no reasonable alternatives.
And, on April 28th, the Majority Leader formally reached out again to Senator Reid, proposing to grant 100 hours of floor debate on each of the filibustered nominees – that’s more than twice the time spent by the Senate debating any of the nominations of the current Supreme Court Justices. Senator Frist also proposed to develop a process to ensure that nominees are not bottled up in the Judiciary Committee, a complaint often made by my Democrat colleagues. Once again, this sincere effort at compromise was immediately rebuffed.
So let the record be clear: The Majority Leader has pursued compromise with vigor, and he should be commended for doing so.
But, of course, when compromise fails, action must take its place. We are here today because there are important principles at stake…principles that are worth defending.
Does the President have the right to expect that his nominees to the federal bench will be fully considered by the United States Senate? Does the Senate have a constitutional obligation to offer “advice and consent” on these nominations? And are judicial nominees entitled to an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor?
The answer, of course, to each of these questions is a resounding “yes.”
For more than 214 years, judicial nominees with clear majority support have received an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, with a majority vote leading to confirmation. Until just two years ago, a 60-vote supermajority was never the standard for confirmation to the federal bench. Those are the facts.
By blocking not one, but ten, of President Bush’s judicial nominees through the inappropriate use of the filibuster, my Democrat colleagues are doing nothing less than setting Senate tradition on its head. They are rewriting the rules of the game while abandoning the custom of self-restraint that has enabled the Senate to function so effectively in the past. And three of these nominees have now withdrawn their names from consideration.
To justify their actions, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would have us believe that filibustering judicial nominees is just business as usual. They specifically cite the nominations of Abe Fortas, Marsha Berzon, and Richard Paez as examples of Republican-led obstruction efforts.
Justice Fortas, of course, lacked majority support when, in 1968, President Johnson withdrew his nomination to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Today’s filibuster victims, on the other hand, all have bipartisan, majority support….and are being permanently blocked despite this fact. Fortas’ nomination was opposed not just by members of one party, as is the case today, but by Democrats and Republicans alike. And let’s not forget: Justice Fortas’ nomination was debated for just several days before President Johnson took action. Many of President Bush’s nominees have been pending before the Senate not for days, but for years.
I am not sure what citing the Berzon and Paez nominations proves, since both individuals were given the courtesy of an up-or-down vote, and both were ultimately confirmed. They are now sitting judges. In fact, the Majority Leader at the time – Trent Lott – worked to end debate on both nominations, believing then, as we do now, that judicial nominees deserve a vote on the Senate floor.
So, Mr. President, what we are witnessing today is something wholly different: it is a highly organized obstruction campaign that is partisan in origin, unfair in its application, harmful to this institution, and unprecedented in our nation’s history.
Now, let’s take a moment to examine the record of the individual whose nomination is before the Senate today. Justice Priscilla Owen has been called everything from an “extremist” to a “far-right partisan” to someone who is “out of the mainstream.”
But the simple fact is that Justice Owen’s record is that of a distinguished jurist who enjoys broad support and who understands that her role is to apply the law fairly and impartially.
Twice elected to the Texas Supreme Court after a long career as a litigator in a prominent Texas law firm, Justice Owen earned the highest score on the December 1977 Texas bar exam and ranked near the top of her class at the Baylor University School of Law. She has been endorsed by a bipartisan group of 15 past presidents of the Texas state bar. An advocate for providing pro bono legal services to the poor, Owen also received a unanimous “well-qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, the highest rating given by that organization. And in her last election to the Texas Supreme Court, Justice Owen earned a stunning 84% of the vote and was endorsed by every major newspaper in the Lone Star state.
Justice Owen received her vote in Texas and she deserves her vote on the floor of the United States Senate.
Mr. President, there is another important issue that must be raised beyond that of the rules and procedures of the Senate: It is the impact this episode in the Senate’s history will have on the willingness of men and women of talent to serve their country by serving on the federal bench.
Millions of Americans have watched as the good reputation of Justice Owen has been unfairly tarnished. As have the reputations of Justice Janice Rogers Brown, and Judge Terrence Boyle, Miguel Estrada, and the other nominees. Their lives and careers have been reduced to partisan – and wholly inaccurate – television sound bites with words like right-wing, radical, extremist.
For those of either party contemplating future service on the federal bench, this spectacle of unfairness must be chilling…a glowing “proceed with caution” signal, suggesting that other career options should be pursued instead.
For the sake of the federal courts and our country, we must do better.
We can start by restoring the traditional standard for the confirmation of judicial nominees. Guaranteeing every nominee the opportunity of an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor will dramatically reduce the role of outside interest groups, who see the filibuster as a way to exert pressure and score political points. It will force us to debate these nominees on the merits…with real arguments…not with politically-convenient slogans and labels. And, hopefully, Mr. President, it will help make an appointment to the federal bench an attractive option for those young people out there who may be thinking about a career in service to the public.
I yield the floor.
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| Elizabeth Dole |
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23rd - current Floor Statement
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