Southwick book an exhibit for confirmation reform

From "Southwick's judicial journey" by Brian Perry

Attorneys interested in the machinations of how federal judges are selected, nominated, confirmed and appointed will find an insightful look behind the scenes in "The Nominee: A Political and Spiritual Journey," the new book by U.S. Fifth Circuit Judge Leslie H. Southwick published by University Press of Mississippi. But the memoir goes beyond legal intrigue and provides and entertaining and exhaustive study of the politics of judicial confirmation for all those interested in the past and future of the judiciary. (Legal or political history nerds will also find helpful his appendix reviewing the background of selection for all Fifth Circuit judges from 1869 to 2012.) Southwick provides an honest account of his struggle to reach the court of appeals bench: ambition checked by humility; calculated moves tempered by seeking God's will; partisan conflict in which he becomes a pawn for a battle not his own but holding his future career in the balance. In 2006, Southwick was nominated for a federal district judge position but that nomination expired without action by the Senate. In 2007, after the U.S. Senate had blocked the nominations of first Judge Charles Pickering, Sr. and later attorney Michael Wallace, Southwick was chosen and his real battle against liberal special interest groups began. Through meetings with Democratic Senators explaining his court opinions, efforts by Cochran and Senator Trent Lott in persuading their colleagues, and the White House rejecting "deals" as it had rejected with Pickering's nomination, ultimately Southwick was confirmed overcoming a filibuster by three votes and then confirmed with a 59 vote majority. The book is not only a political memoir, but a story of a man following his faith and acknowledging his own failures. It is also another testament to the broken judicial confirmation process. I find similar emotions and observations from Southwick and many others who have commented on the judicial selection process. An honorable man is frustrated when his character is assaulted. There is a desire for people to know the truth. A nominee and his family face anguish over months and years as the process drags on at "glacial" speed with their lives and careers in limbo. Those observations are not only from Republican nominees, but also from Democrats. The judicial confirmation process fails nominees and needs reform. Pickering suggested a number of reforms in his books and Southwick's book is an exhibit for the pressing need to provide a reliable and fair (to both parties) mechanism to confirm or reject nominees.

The Obama Court

In my column today in the Madison County Journal, I write about the difference between a John McCain judiciary and a Barack Obama judiciary. Here is an excerpt:

Pickering, Wallace, and Southwick believe in the Constitution; they believe we are a nation of laws and not of men; they believe role of a judge is to interpret the laws and Constitution as written, and not to legislate from the bench or impose their own beliefs and values onto others through their rulings.

Senator John McCain shares that perspective.

Last week in a speech on his judicial philosophy delivered at Wake Forest University, McCain promised if elected President: "I will look for accomplished men and women with a proven record of excellence in the law, and a proven commitment to judicial restraint. I will look for people in the cast of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and my friend the late William Rehnquist - jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference. My nominees will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power. They will be men and women of experience and wisdom, and the humility that comes with both. They will do their work with impartiality, honor, and humanity, with an alert conscience, immune to flattery and fashionable theory, and faithful in all things to the Constitution of the United States."

Sen. Barack Obama, who appears to be inching toward the Democratic nomination, told a very different philosophy to CNN in a recent interview: "What you're looking for is somebody who is going to apply the law where it's clear. Now there's gonna be those five percent of cases or one percent of cases where the law isn't clear. And the judge has to then bring in his or her own perspectives, his ethics, his or her moral bearings. And in those circumstance what I do want is a judge who is sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless, those who can't have access to political power and as a consequence can't protect themselves from being being dealt with sometimes unfairly, that the courts become a refuge for justice. That's been its historic role. That was its role in Brown v. Board of Education."

Obama is a former constitutional law professor. He knows what he is saying. Obama believes a judge should interpret vague laws based on his own opinions, his own ethics, his own values, and weight those beliefs in favor of the underdog. That is the essence of liberal judicial activism.

Judges appealing to their own perspectives, ethics, and morals ruled in Dredd Scott v Sandford that blacks were not citizens; and judges seeking the law in themselves - as Obama advocates - ruled in Plessy v Ferguson to create separate but equal policies.

Some may say it is absurd to put Obama on the same side as these horrendous Supreme Court rulings. However, if activist judges had not ignored originalism in the former, nor disregarded the Fourteenth Amendment in the latter, America's journey to equality would have been achieved earlier.

When we become a nation of men and not laws, even if those men have good intentions, we have injustice.

You can read the full column here: PERRY/Exercising judicial restraint

Southwick Confirmed

WDAM: Southwick To Join 5th Circuit

Clarion Ledger Editorial: Southwick: Judge judged by region's history

Andy Taggart has the vote tallies for cloture and confirmation.

NYT: Judge opposed by Democrats confirmed

Southwick Vote Today

The Clarion Ledger reports: "The Senate is expected to vote today to end debate on the nomination of Mississippi Judge Leslie Southwick to the federal bench, setting the stage for a vote after weeks of delay....Because some Democrats oppose Southwick's nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a 60-vote majority will be needed to end debate on the nomination....If all 49 Republicans vote for Southwick, as expected, 11 Democratic votes would be needed to end debate on the nomination and then hold an up-or-down confirmation vote....Several conservative Democrats, including Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, have committed to voting for Southwick to sit on the court to hear cases from Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas....Several Democrats have said they will vote to end debate on Southwick's nomination, including Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Mark Pryor of Arkansas....Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent who usually votes with Democrats, also is expected to vote for cloture."

Filibuster Southwick?

There is talk of a filibuster of Leslie Southwick's nomination to the Pickering seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ana Radelat writes in today's Jackson Clarion Ledger: Southwick's nomination to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has been bitterly opposed by many Democrats who've criticized the judge's record on civil rights based on decisions he made while serving on the Mississippi Court of Appeals. But opposition to Southwick has not reached the level it had for previous nominees for that seat whom the Democrats were able to block from Senate confirmation - Mississippi Judge Charles Pickering and Jackson lawyer Mike Wallace. Nan Aron, president of Alliance for Justice, said she hoped a Democratic senator would filibuster the nomination, or hold it up by extended debate...."We are not ruling out any technique ... including the filibuster," Aron said. (Read the full story here)

Judge Pickering discusses in depth the filibuster (its history, tradition, rules, motivations) in both his books. Chapter 10 of Supreme Chaos is titled "Filibuster: The Historic and Constitutional Case for Confirmation by Majority Vote" and Chapter 18 of A Price Too High is titled "End the Filibuster: The Constitutional Option."

Pickering notes in A Price Too High that early warnings of a filibuster were ignored during his and other early Bush nominees' confirmation fights: "Republicans did not take the warning of a filibuster seriously. The Democrats didn’t filibuster Robert Bork, and they didn’t filibuster Clarence Thomas. In fact, neither party had ever employed the filibuster to deny confirmation to a nominee enjoying majority support. Blocking nominees in committee was bad enough, but blocking judicial nominees by filibuster would be unprecedented. The Democrats had just taken a licking at the ballot box in part due to their obstruction of judicial nominees. Election losses historically are effective teaching techniques utilized by voters. Those of us who doubted the Democrats would follow through on the threatened filibuster did not comprehend the control that the Far Left—out of the mainstream—special-interest groups held over the Democrats in the Senate." (page 120)

He later notes that the filibuster is purely a political tool because controversial and important nominations have always been dealt with previously: "It is not necessary to filibuster judges who are truly out of the mainstream. History shows us the Senate can discuss, vet, and even defeat contentious Supreme Court nominees without the need of a filibuster. In fact, the Senate has defeated twelve Supreme Court nominees by majority vote without filibuster. Certainly if we can resolve the Supreme Court nominations without filibusters, we can do the same for appellate nominees." (page 250)

Southwick voted out of committee

A surprise yes vote from Senator Feinstein passes Southwick out of committee.

Southwick

Still being delayed, here is the latest.

Southwick Update

Sid Salter at Mississippi's Clarion Ledger blogs, "Don't take my word for the partisan character assassination aimed at Mississippi Judge Leslie Southwick. Read what a national group has to say on the subject" and posts a press release from the Campaign for Justice with the headline: "Southern White Male Nominees Face Bias in Senate - Dems’ campaign against Judge Southwick repeats same old charges".

Meanwhile, the Legal Times Blog writes: Conservatives Counterattack For Southwick

FotF on Southwick

Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family, writes about the Southwick situation. Here is an excerpt:

These charges are even more profoundly false and transparent than usual, because they are based on a couple opinions that Southwick didn't even write. And both decisions were correct as a matter of law and appellate practice, but that didn’t' matter to the attack dogs who are seeking to derail the third straight Mississippi nominee for this 5th Circuit seat.

That's right – both Charles Pickering and Michael Wallace were previously nominated by this president for this same seat, then tarred and feathered by the Left with similarly ridiculous treatment as Southwick is receiving now. Apparently liberals look upon white male nominees from Mississippi as whack-a-moles – when one pops up, bam!

Read the full story here.

Southwick delayed

The Clarion Ledger reports Southwick was delayed again, in hopes that the Demcrats will agree to vote him out of committee with at least a neutral recommendation or even a negative recommendation: either of which still gives the full Senate the opportunity to vote.

The CQ Today report says in part:

Last week, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., suggested that Bush withdraw Southwick’s nomination and instead nominate an African-American candidate and name Southwick to a district court seat....The senator said White House counsel Fred F. Fielding told him June 13 that Bush will not follow Leahy’s advice.

According to both Leahy and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the panel, a majority of the committee is against Southwick’s nomination for the 5th Circuit....Specter also has suggested that the panel send the nomination to the floor, even with an unfavorable recommendation, rather than reject it outright. Leahy said that won’t happen.

Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Chairwoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., and another CBC member, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, appeared in the committee room to buttonhole Democrats before the meeting Thursday. They sat in the audience until Leahy postponed the planned vote.

....Bush has been trying to fill the same 5th Circuit seat since 2001, when he nominated Charles W. Pickering Sr. The next year, a Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee rejected Pickering’s nomination.

Democrats filibustered Pickering in the 108th Congress. In early 2004, Bush gave Pickering a recess appointment, which lasted until the end of that Congress.

In the 109th Congress, Bush tapped Michael Wallace for the seat. The American Bar Association rated Wallace “not qualified” for the position, and the Senate did not vote on his nomination.

After Bush nominated Southwick to a Mississippi district court seat, he became part of a package of district court picks readied for floor action near the end of the 109th Congress. But the Senate did not vote on the package after Sam Brownback, R-Kan., blocked another nominee in the group, Janet T. Neff, whom Bush had nominated to a Michigan district court. Bush renominated Neff this year, and the Judiciary Committee approved her nomination last month.

Thad Cochran, R-Miss., strongly supports Southwick. “He’s one of the finest lawyers in the state of Mississippi, and it’s pure partisan politics at its worst,” Cochran said.

Southwick vote today

After a couple of delays, Southwick's nomination to the Fifth Circuit comes up for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Mississippi's largest newspaper, the Clarion Ledger, is for him in this editorial.

UPDATE: Southwick vote postponed again. LegalTimesBlog says: Conceding that he didn’t have the votes to pass Southwick out of the committee, Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) asked for Southwick to be held over again until next week. Of the move to wait another week Specter said, “I would like another week, perhaps to waste my time” to find enough votes to pass Southwick to the full Senate floor.

Pickering and Southwick

Great post and analysis at ConfirmThem.com on the truth against PFAW and the other liberals' attacks on judges like Pickering and Southwick.

Judicial Speech Code

The Wall Street Journal responds to the Southwick attacks, here are some excerpts:

Move over, Roe v. Wade. The latest liberal judicial litmus test is whether the nominee is willing to repudiate the phrase "homosexual lifestyle." Believe it or not, that's one of the two raps against Leslie Southwick, whose nomination for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee today.

After more than five months of Democratic control, Ralph Neas, Nan Aron and other liberal activists are so desperate to prove their relevance that they will grasp at any allegation to put another trophy kill over their mantel. What happens to Judge Southwick's nomination may well preview the fate of other appeals-court nominees in the rest of President Bush's term.

....liberal critics, having scoured his 7,000-plus rulings on the Mississippi appeals bench, uncovered two allegedly hanging offenses. Both were about words that the judge himself never uttered but were contained in decisions he joined--one involving homosexuals, the other race....

The flimsy pretext for stopping Judge Southwick suggests that the judicial left has decided to browbeat Democrats into blocking nearly all Bush appellate nominees. They're hoping to retake the White House in 2008 and want everyone to forget that the current President still has 19 months in office. Only three Bush appointees have been approved this year, and there are currently five nominees for 13 vacancies. At this pace, the confirmation rate won't come close to the 15 appeals-court nominees approved by a GOP Senate during Bill Clinton's last two years.

Judiciary Democrats aren't saying how they'll vote today, but Republicans believe they have the votes to confirm if Judge Southwick's nomination gets to the Senate floor. If the judge loses--or if he's approved in committee and then denied an up-or-down vote on the floor--you'll know Ralph Neas is running the confirmation asylum.

Long Knives out for Southwick

The left-wing special interest groups have turned up their attacks on Southwick. Excerpts from the piece in today's Clarion Ledger:

"We are looking to the committee to do the right thing," said Nan Aron, president of Alliance for Justice, one of the groups opposed to Southwick's nomination. She also said the committee's acceptance of what she called the first controversial nomination of the new Congress "would set a very dark precedent."

Only one senator has disclosed his opposition to Southwick. On Thursday, Ben LaBolt, press secretary to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said the senator - a White House candidate - would oppose the nomination if approved by the Judiciary Committee and sent to the Senate floor.

"Senator Obama shares the concerns of his fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus that Judge Southwick would not adequately defend the rights of workers and enforce civil rights laws, and he opposes his lifetime appointment to the federal appeals court," LaBolt said. "Given the rocky history of appointments to this important seat on the court, Senator Obama believes the president should nominate a consensus candidate who will fairly interpret and uphold the laws of the nation."

Southwick's candidacy is opposed by some of the same groups who helped foster opposition to previous nominees for the seat - retired Judge Charles Pickering and Jackson lawyer Michael Wallace.

Left wing groups in Texas also hit him at press conference.

And from the left's press, The Nation opines: Southwick offers a truly lamentable record of rulings on civil and equal rights and a history that staunchly favors special interests over individual rights and liberties...Southwick has gone out of his way to express troubling views on workers' rights, has joined strikingly homophobic decisions and has voted consistently against consumers and workers in divided torts and employment decisions...The Congressional Black Caucus, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, People for the American Way, Human Rights Campaign, National Employment Lawyers Association, National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce, Mississippi NAACP and the Magnolia Bar are all calling for his defeat...This is a fight that can be won.

Salter on PFAW

Sid Salter blogs on "People for the American Way" and their slander of Southwick (and Pickering and Wallace before him):

If there exists an organization in this country that flies under more false colors than People for The American Way, I haven't seen it....This group seems to exist for the sole purpose of assaulting the character of any judge who happens to disagree with their views on abortion. As we've seen in the case of Mississippians Charles Pickering, Mike Wallace, and now Leslie Southwick, People for the American Way will stop at nothing to muddy and sully any judicial nominee with whom they disagree. Since these are Mississippians and Republicans to boot, the quick and dirty method is to accuse them of racism....Today, PFAW are trying to scuttle Southwick's nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as they have those of Pickering and Wallace. The attacks on Southwick are so baseless and ignore the reality of Southwick's life in Mississippi. People for the American Way and Ralph Neas, their leader, have totally misrepresented the lives of these three men simply to further PFAW's own pro-choice agenda. That's fine if that what they want to do, but let's not call anything about these sleazy smear campaigns "the American way." It's the "American way" only if you live in the late Sen. Joe McCarthy's America.

People for the American Way on Southwick

In this article accusing Southwick of Homophobia and maybe racism, Ralph Neas, President of People for the American Way says, "First Pickering, then Wallace, and now Southwick – Bush has completely struck out on the Fifth Circuit....Just like Pickering and Wallace before him, Southwick appears ready and willing to turn back the clock on fifty years of social justice progress in our nation."

In Pickering's upcoming book he writes about the records of other Bush nominees Miguel Estrada, Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, and William Pryor saying, “They are and were all excellent jurists who were treated unfairly. The slander and attack and lies they faced are a price too high for public service; but they endured and they prevailed." Pickering additionally said of Estrada, “He was treated more unfairly than I or any of the other Bush nominees. His confirmation would have been an inspiration and a challenge to immigrants and minorities across our land, and he would have served with distinction in the federal judiciary. Any sensitive and thinking American should be offended by what Far Left special–interest groups did to Miguel Estrada. The price of public service should not be so high.”

People for the American Way are now trying to extract that same high price from Leslie Southwick.

Southwick, Wallace, Pickering

The Jackson Clarion Ledger writes in an editorial today, "The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's postponing a scheduled vote last week on the nomination of Leslie Southwick to a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was not unexpected, given the past politics and posturing by Senate Democrats on the nominations of Charles Pickering and Michael Wallace. But, it's still extremely frustrating....It's clear that no Republican nominee submitted from Mississippi by President Bush will be satisfactory to Senate Democrats and the special interests to whom Democrats are beholden. To be sure, Republicans have engaged in similar tactics in the past against Clinton-era judicial nominees and GOP nominees are now paying the price. But in the process of this futile exercise in politics and posturing, the characters of three good and decent Mississippians have been unjustly assaulted. Southwick, Wallace and Pickering are guilty of one charge - they are guilty of being Republicans with right-of-center views on abortion. But they've been branded by special interests as racists and worse during the confirmation process - a charge that is easy to make against a Mississippian and one that is of a nuclear political nature. In the cases of Southwick and Pickering in particular, the charge of racism is at such odds with their public and personal conduct in Mississippi as to be ridiculous....(Read the full editorial here)

"The Clinton Administration" blogs on this today as well.

Democrats Delay Southwick

In early 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Judge Charles Pickering to fill a seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Except for the one year that Pickering served on that court with a recess appointment, this vacancy (termed a judicial emergency) has persisted until today. The Democrats delayed, obstructed, blocked and filibustered Pickering. Then the Democrats delayed, obstructed and blocked Mike Wallace who eventually withdrew. Now the Democrats are delaying and obstructing Leslie Southwick. Full story in today's Clarion Ledger.