Ruling Out the ABA on Judges The Senate needn’t listen to the lawyers’ guild on nominees.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ruling-out-the-aba-on-judges-1510703170
If Republicans are serious about getting President Trump’s judicial nominees confirmed, they will have to rid themselves of the fiction of a politically neutral American Bar Association. The outfit’s recent antics provide ample reason to remove it from Senate vetting.
The ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary last week informed the Judiciary Committee that Brett Talley is “not qualified” to serve as a federal judge. This is the fourth “not qualified” rating the ABA has slapped on Trump nominees, including Leonard Steven Grasz for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mr. Grasz’s “not qualified” rating rests on a misrepresentation of the former Nebraska chief deputy attorney general’s views on judicial precedent. Mr. Grasz once argued in a 1999 article that lower courts shouldn’t stretch Supreme Court rulings into broader rights, but the ABA contorts this to suggest Mr. Grasz would ignore Roe v. Wade. Mr. Grasz explicitly wrote in the same article that “lower federal courts are obliged to follow clear legal precedent regardless of whether it may seem unwise or even morally repugnant to do so.”
As for Mr. Talley, nominated for the district court in Alabama, the ABA says he lacks the “requisite trial experience,” having never tried a case. This ignores that the 36-year-old has clerked for a federal district judge and a federal appellate judge, has worked at the whiteshoe Gibson Dunn & Crutcher firm, and served as the Deputy Solicitor General of Alabama.
Many nominees have been younger than Mr. Talley, and the ABA called Barack Obama nominee Goodwin Liu “well-qualified” despite no experience as a trial judge. The ABA also called Elena Kagan “well qualified” for the Supreme Court, as indeed she was, despite her lack of trial experience. But since the ABA found nothing amiss with Mr. Talley’s “integrity” or “temperament,” it settled on a concern with “requisite” experience.
In an August letter to Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, Senator Jeff Flake and four colleagues outlined the ABA’s long history of political liberal activism, and noted their concerns with the Senate outsourcing advice and consent to “unaccountable outside groups.” They also pointed out how useless ABA ratings are, given the number of judges who have been judged “not qualified” but were confirmed and have had distinguished bench careers.
ABA Standing Committee Chair Pamela Bresnahan wants Senate Judiciary to invite the ABA to more hearings. Mr. Grassley should respond by informing the ABA that hearings on judicial nominees will no longer have to wait for completed ABA evaluations.
Mr. Trump followed George W. Bush and scrapped the practice of letting the ABA pre-screen nominees for the White House. Yet the Senate continues to give the lawyers’ guild too much sway. There are more than enough judicial watchdogs on the left and right to inform the Senate.
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