Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further materials be printed in the Record following my remarks. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, today I rise in support of the nomination of Miguel Estrada to sit on the DC Circuit Court of…
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further materials be printed in the Record following my remarks.
I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, today I rise in support of the nomination of Miguel Estrada to sit on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. As has been said many times in this Chamber, Mr. Estrada is highly qualified to sit on this court and deserves a fair hearing and a vote in the Senate.
There are four vacancies on the DC Circuit's 12 seats. Most lawyers consider the DC Circuit to be the second most important court in the United States. That means the court is missing one-third of its judges.
That is alarming. The seat for which Mr. Estrada has been nominated has been designated as a judicial emergency by the Judicial Conference of the United States. To leave the seat empty for any longer is unacceptable and dangerous.
In Kentucky, we know a little bit about vacancies. We are part of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and that panel has 6 vacancies right now out of 16 total seats. That is a little better from not too long ago when we had 8 openings, but it is not much better. In all, the U.S. Courts of Appeals have 25 vacancies, totaling 15 percent of the entire system.
The situation is so bad the American Bar Association has described it as an emergency. Fortunately, the Judiciary Committee held hearings on four appellate court nominees recently, and one of those nominees is now before the Senate. At least we are starting to see some progress.
Recently, Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered his annual report on the state of the Federal judiciary. One of the key points he emphasized was promptly filling vacancies. With this nomination, we have the opportunity to begin filling empty seats on the bench.
Case filings in the Federal court system hit a new record high last year, and I believe that trend will continue this year also. The record number of cases in the court system, combined with judicial vacancies, led the Chief Justice to warn Congress that proper functioning of the court system is in jeopardy. The Senate cannot and must not allow that to happen.
In concluding his remarks on judicial vacancies, the Chief Justice said:
We simply ask that the President nominate qualified
candidates with reasonable promptness and that the Senate act
within a reasonable time to confirm or reject them.
I cannot imagine a clearer signal to the Senate to fulfill its responsibility to confirm judges.
President Bush has done his part in nominating candidates of the highest moral integrity and legal expertise. Each of his nominees has been carefully selected, and each deserves a hearing and a vote, which leads us to the nomination before us today.
Mr. Estrada was nominated by President Bush in early 2001. Although he did get a hearing in the Judiciary Committee after well over a year, he was not granted a vote. It took almost 2 years for him just to get his day in court. In fact, when the 107th Congress ended last year, 31 nominees were still waiting in committee for a vote. We had not even had hearings in the Judiciary Committee.
Twelve of the 14 pending nominees for the court of appeals were nominated in 2001, and six of them, including Miguel Estrada, were among the first group of nominees submitted to the Senate nearly 2 years ago.
The judicial nomination situation in the Senate is totally unacceptable. Fifteen of President Bush's appellate nominees have had to wait more than a year for a hearing--not even a vote, just a hearing. According to the Justice Department, 15 of President Bush's appellate court nominees have had to wait over a year for a hearing. This is a higher total than the combined total that had to wait over a year for the past 50 years.
Almost 90 percent of the appellate court nominees made in the first 2 years of the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton administrations were confirmed by the Senate. But in the first 2 years of this administration, only 54 percent were confirmed.
Chief Justice Rehnquist is not exaggerating when he says the status of judicial nominations threatens the very function of our court system and justice itself.
As for Mr. Estrada, he is a fitting nominee to break this logjam. Mr. Estrada is an inspiration. He has lived the American dream. He will become the first Hispanic to serve on that prestigious court. He is a fine example of the quality nominees President Bush has sent to the Senate.
Mr. Estrada came to the United States when he was 17 years old, growing up in Honduras. He spoke little English when he arrived in America, but that did not keep him from graduating magna cum laude from Columbia College and Harvard Law School. He is no stranger to the appellate court system.
After law school, he clerked for a judge at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. After that, he was a clerk for Justice Kennedy at the Supreme Court. Mr. Estrada then served as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York and a deputy chief of the appellate section of the
U.S. Attorney's Office. Those jobs required him to try cases in the district courts and argue before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Next, he served in the Office of the Solicitor General during William Jefferson Clinton's administration. Now he is a partner in the Washington, DC, law firm of Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher.
It has been said many times, but I think it is worth repeating, Mr. Estrada earned the American Bar Association's highest rating for a nominee, a ``unanimously well-qualified'' rating.
He has been endorsed by a long list of political, business, and civil rights organizations. I have yet to hear any detractors make credible arguments that he is not qualified. I can see no obstacle to his being confirmed. He is supported by Seth Waxman, a Solicitor General under former President Clinton, as well as the former chief legal counsel to Vice President Gore. There is no question in my mind that Mr. Estrada will make a fine judge once confirmed. His life story is an inspiration for minorities, and all of us, throughout America. His hard work and dedication is obvious. His academic and legal achievements cannot be denied.
I urge the Senate to quickly hold a vote on this nomination, and I urge my colleagues to support Miguel Estrada.
I yield the floor.
Exhibit 1
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC, February 4, 2003.
Dear Colleague: I write to urge you to support the
confirmation of Miguel A. Estrada, who has been nominated for
a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia Circuit. If he is confirmed, he will be the first
Hispanic to sit on this court, which is widely considered to
be the second most important court in the country.
Mr. Estrada represents an immigrant success story. Born in
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, his parents divorced when he was only
four years old. Mr. Estrada remained in Honduras with his
father while his sister immigrated to the United States with
his mother. Years later, as a teenager, Mr. Estrada joined
his mother in the United States. Although he had taken
English classes during school in Honduras, he actually spoke
very little English when he immigrated. He nevertheless
taught himself the language well enough to earn a B- in his
first college English course. In a matter of years, he not
only perfected his English skills, but he exceeded the
achievements of many persons for whom English is their native
tongue. He graduated with a bachelor's degree magna cum laude
and Phi Beta Kappa in 1983 from Columbia College, then
received a J.D. degree magna cum laude in 1986 from Harvard
Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Mr. Estrada's professional career has been marked by one
success after another. He clerked for Second Circuit Judge
Amalya Kearse--a Carter appointee--then Supreme Court Justice
Anthony Kennedy. He worked as an associate at Wachtell Lipton
in New York--as high powered a law firm as they come. He then
worked as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, rising to become
deputy chief of the appellate division. In recognition of his
appellate skills, he was hired by the Department of Justice
Solicitor General's Office in 1992. He stayed with that
office for most of the Clinton Administration. When he left
that office in 1997, he joined the Washington, D.C., office
of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he has continued to excel
as a partner. He has argued an impressive 15 cases before the
United States Supreme Court, and the non-partisan American
Bar Association has bestowed upon him its highest rating of
Unanimously Well Qualified.
I take the time to offer up this brief recitation of Mr.
Estrada's personal and professional history because I think
it illustrates that he is, in fact, far from the right-wing
ideologue that some have portrayed him to be. He clerked for
Judge Kearse, a Carter appointee, then Justice Kennedy, a
moderate by any standard. He joined the Solicitor General's
Office during the first Bush Administration, but stayed on
through much of the Clinton Administration. His
supporters include a host of well-respected Clinton
Administration lawyers, including Ron Klain, former Vice
President Gore's Chief of Staff; Robert Litt, head of the
Criminal Division in the Reno Justice Department; Randolph
Moss, former Assistant Attorney General; and Seth Waxman,
former Solicitor General for President Clinton. He has
defended pro bono convicted criminals, including a death
row inmate whom he represented before the Supreme Court in
an effort to overturn his death sentence. He has broad
support from the Hispanic community, including the
endorsement of the League of United Latin American
Citizens (which is the country's oldest Hispanic civil
rights organization), the Hispanic National Bar
Association, the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the
Hispanic Business Roundtable, the Latino Coalition, and
many others.
Mr. Estrada has been unfairly criticized by some for
declining to answer questions at his hearing about whether
particular Supreme Court cases were correctly decided. Lloyd
Cutler, who was White House counsel to both President Carter
and President Clinton, put it best when he testified before a
Judiciary Committee subcommittee in 2001. He said,
``Candidates should decline to reply when efforts are made to
find out how they would decide a particular case.'' He
further explained, ``What is most important is the
appointment of judges who are learned in the law, who are
conscientious in their work ethic, and who possess what
lawyers describe as `judicial temperament.'' ' Mr. Estrada's
academic achievement, his professional accomplishments, and
the letters of bipartisan support we have received from his
colleagues all indicate that Mr. Estrada fits this
description.
Several opponents of Mr. Estrada have attempted to block
his confirmation by boldly demanding that the Department of
Justice release internal memoranda he authored while he was
an Assistant to the Solicitor General. All seven living
former Solicitors General--four Democrats and three
Republicans--oppose this request. Their letter to the
Committee explains that the open exchange of ideas upon which
they relied as Solicitors General ``simply cannot take place
if attorneys have reasons to fear that their private
recommendations are not private at all, but vulnerable to
public disclosure.'' They concluded that ``any attempt to
intrude into the Office's highly privileged deliberations
would come at a cost of the Solicitor General's ability to
defend vigorously the United states' litigation interests
cost that also would be borne by Congress itself.'' The Wall
Street Journal and the Washington Post have also criticized
the attempts to obtain these memoranda.
These misguided efforts should not prevent our confirmation
of a well-qualified nominee who has pledged to be fair and
impartial, and to uphold the law regardless of his personal
convictions. I have no doubt that Mr. Estrada will be one of
the most brilliant federal appellate judges of our time, and
I urge you to join me in voting to confirm him.
Sincerely,
Orrin G. Hatch,
Chairman.