[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 153 (Wednesday, November 5, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11709-S11711]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




NOMINATION OF MARGARET MORROW TO BE U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE FOR THE CENTRAL 
                         DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, although I am delighted that the Senate 
will today be confirming James S. Gwin as a Federal district court 
judge, the Republican Leader has once again passed over and refused to 
take up the nomination of Margaret Morrow. Ms. Morrow's nomination is 
the longest pending judicial nomination on the Senate Calendar, having 
languished on the Senate Calendar since June 12. The central district 
of California desperately needs this vacancy filled, which has been 
open for more than 18 months, and Margaret Morrow is eminently 
qualified to fill it.
  Just last week, the opponents of this nomination announced in a press 
conference that they welcomed a debate and rollcall vote on Margaret 
Morrow. But again the Republican majority leader has refused to bring 
up this well-qualified nominee for such debate and vote. It appears 
that Republicans have time for press conferences to attack one of the 
President's judicial nominations, but the majority leader will not 
allow the U.S. Senate to turn to that nomination for a vote. We can 
discuss the nomination in sequential press conferences and weekend talk 
show appearances but not in the one place that action must be taken on 
it, on the floor of the U.S. Senate. The Senate has suffered through 
hours of quorum calls in the past few weeks which time would have been 
better spent debating and voting on this judicial nomination.
  The extremist attacks on Margaret Morrow are puzzling--not only to 
those

[[Page S11710]]

of us in the Senate who know her record but to those who know her best 
in California, including many Republicans.
  They cannot fathom why a few Senators have decided to target someone 
as well-qualified and as moderate as she is.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a recent article from the 
Los Angles Times by Henry Weinstein on the nomination of Margaret 
Morrow, entitled ``Bipartisan Support Not Enough For Judicial 
Nominee,'' be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my statement.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. LEAHY. This article documents the deep and widespread bipartisan 
support that Margaret Morrow enjoys from Republicans that know her. In 
fact, these Republicans are shocked that some Senators have attacked 
Ms. Morrow. For example, Sheldon H. Sloan, a former president of the 
Los Angeles County Bar Association and an associate of Gov. Pete 
Wilson, declared that: ``My party has the wrong woman in their 
sights.''
  Stephen S. Trott, a former high-ranking official in the Reagan 
administration and now a Court of Appeals judge wrote to the majority 
leader to try to free up the Morrow nomination, according to this 
article Judge Trott informed Senator Lott.

       I know that you are concerned, and properly so, about the 
     judicial philosophy of each candidate to the federal bench. 
     So am I. I have taken the oath, and I know what it means: 
     follow the law, don't make it up to suit your own purposes. 
     Based on my own long acquaintance with Margaret Morrow, I 
     have every confidence she will respect the limitations of a 
     judicial position.

  Robert Bonner, the former head of DEA under a Republican 
administration, observed in the article that: ``Margaret has gotten 
tangled in a web of larger forces about Clinton nominees. She is a mere 
pawn in this struggle.'' I could not agree more.
  Mr. President, it is time to free the nomination of Margaret Morrow 
from this tangled web that some extremists are trying to weave. It is 
time to debate and vote on the nomination of Margaret Morrow.
  Mr. President, again, I am pleased we will take up the nomination of 
Judge James Gwin. But we are, once again, overlooking the nomination of 
Margaret Morrow. Ms. Morrow's nomination is the longest pending 
judicial nomination on the Senate Calendar, and is strongly supported 
by both Republicans and Democrats. The Senate ought to have the courage 
and the honesty to either vote for her or against her.

               [From the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 3, 1997]

                               Exhibit 1

           Bipartisan Support Not Enough for Judicial Nominee

(U.S. Senate: Margaret Morrow's appointment is stalled despite backing 
across political spectrum. Some say she is victim of effort to downsize 
                                courts)

                          (By Henry Weinstein)

       If ever there was an unlikely candidate to be the target 
     for a militant campaign against ``judicial activism,'' it 
     would be Los Angeles lawyer Margaret Mary Morrow.
       An honors graduate of Harvard Law School, 47, was the first 
     female president of the California Bar Assn., where she 
     worked to strengthen the state's attorney discipline system.
       A commercial litigation specialist, Morrow is a partner in 
     the Los Angeles office of Arnold & Porter, one of the most 
     venerable firms based in the nation's capital. Her clients 
     have included First Interstate Bank, McDonnell Douglas, TWA 
     and The Limited.
       President Clinton, on the recommendation of Sen. Barbara 
     Boxer (D-Calif.), tapped Morrow for a federal trial judgeship 
     in May 1996. She quickly won bipartisan support--including 
     endorsements from judges appointed by presidents Ronald 
     Reagan and George Bush and governors George Deukmejian and 
     Pete Wilson.
       ``Margaret is superbly well qualified,'' said Los Angeles 
     lawyer Robert C. Bonner, who has served as a federal judge 
     and head of the Drug Enforcement Administration during Bush's 
     presidency.
       She also received the highest possible rating--``very well 
     qualified''--from the American Bar Assn.'s judicial 
     evaluation committee. By late 1996, after a perfunctory 
     hearing, Morrow cleared the committee unanimously. But the 
     nomination died, along with several others in the 
     congressional slowdown that inevitably occurs in election 
     years.
       Clinton renominated Morrow on Jan. 7. Within three weeks, 
     trouble emerged and her nomination remains in limbo even 
     though she was approved a second time on June 12 by the 
     Judiciary Committee, whose chairman, Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), 
     said in late September that he would push for a swift vote 
     and support her.
       Much to the surprise of her backers, particularly her 
     Republican supporters, Morrow has become the subject of the 
     sort of intense partisan attacks generally reserved for 
     nominees with a long record of activism such as civil rights 
     lawyer Thurgood Marshall or a trail of controversial 
     decisions such as Judge Robert Bork.
       Indeed, the story of Morrow's confirmation battle is in 
     significant measure a tale about the fissures within the 
     Republican Party about judicial nominations.
       One conservative federal judge, speaking on condition of 
     not being identified, said that, in reality, the campaign 
     against Morrow has nothing to do with her qualifications or 
     her views, but rather is part of a ``conscious plan to 
     downsize'' the federal courts in the western United States 
     with the goal of remaking them after Clinton's presidency 
     ends.
       Echoed Bonner: ``Margaret has gotten tangled in a web of 
     larger forces about Clinton nominees. She is a mere pawn in 
     this struggle.''
       The campaign against Morrow began with a Jan. 28 op-ed 
     piece in The Washington Times by Thomas L. Jipping, director 
     of the militantly conservative Free Congress Foundation's 
     Judicial Selection Monitoring Project.
       Jipping contended that Morrow was likely to become an 
     ``activist judge,'' who improperly would attempt to legislate 
     a political agenda from the bench. Soon, Republican senators 
     John Ashcroft of Missouri and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, both 
     staunch conservatives, new members of the Judiciary Committee 
     and Jipping allies, joined the attack.
       Since that time, Morrow has been back to the committee for 
     another hearing and answered three sets of questions in 
     writing--including highly unusual questions about her 
     positions on many California ballot initiatives during the 
     past 10 years. She also told the committee she would adhere 
     strictly to precedents and would have no problem applying the 
     death penalty.
       Last Wednesday, the effort to derail Morrow's nomination 
     escalated. Ashcroft and Sessions announced that they would 
     spearhead further opposition to Morrow and said more than 100 
     ``grassroots'' organizations, including the National Rifle 
     Assn. and the Traditional Values Coalition, had joined the 
     campaign against her.
       The coalition was assembled while Ashcroft had placed ``a 
     hold'' on the nomination, which under Senate protocol had 
     prevented it from coming to the floor for a vote. On 
     Wednesday, at a news conference announcing the coalition, he 
     said he now favors a roll-call vote.
       Ashcroft and Sessions pointedly reminded their colleagues 
     that several organizations in the coalition would be 
     ``scoring'' the votes of senators on the nomination.
       Morrow's adversaries contend that she would be a ``judicial 
     activist'' on the bench. ``She views the law as an engine for 
     social change . . . and as a means of imposing public policy 
     from the courts on the rest of us,'' Ashcroft asserted.
       Morrow declined to respond. ``I do not believe it is 
     appropriate for me to comment while my nomination is pending 
     before the Senate,'' she said in a brief telephone interview 
     at week's end.
       Morrow has previously denied such characterizations. For 
     example, in June 1996, she told the Judiciary Committee: ``I 
     view the role of a judge as being the resolution of disputes 
     that come before . . . him or her for resolution. So I would 
     look to the facts of the case. I would attempt to apply the 
     law as I understand it to those facts. And I would not seek 
     to expand them or otherwise to use any particular case as a 
     reason for articulating new constitutional rights or 
     otherwise expanding what I understand to be the existing 
     law.''
       Boxer and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking minority 
     member on the Judiciary Committee, came to Morrow's defense 
     last week. Boxer described her as ``the epitome of 
     mainstream'' and Leahy charged that a coalition of 
     conservative activists is using Morrow as ``a fund-raising 
     vehicle'' for their campaign to reduce the power of 
     federal judges.
       Perhaps more importantly, several staunch Republicans said 
     the accusations against Morrow are ludicrous. ``My party has 
     the wrong woman in their sights,'' declared Sheldon H. Sloan, 
     former president of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. and a 
     close ally of Wilson. ``There is no flag burning for Margaret 
     Morrow,'' said Sloan, describing the nominee as both an 
     outstanding lawyer and ``a church-going, basketball mom.''
       A large number of prominent Republicans have backed the 
     nominee in writing--highlighted by rare letters of support 
     from three conservative U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals 
     judges--Pamela A. Rymer, Cynthia Holcomb Hall and Stephen S. 
     Trott, State Supreme Court Justice Marvin R. Baxter and state 
     appeals court justices Roger Boren, H. Walter Croskey and 
     Charles S. Vogel, all appointed by Republican governors, also 
     have weighed in on Morrow's behalf, as have Los Angeles Mayor 
     Richard Riordan, then-state

[[Page S11711]]

     Assembly Majority Leader James E. Rogan of Glendale and 
     Orange County Dist. Att. Michael R. Capizzi.
       In an effort to unclog the nomination, Trott, who earlier 
     served as a high-ranking official in the Justice Department 
     under President Reagan, recently wrote to Senate Majority 
     Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.).
       ``I know you are concerned, and properly so, about the 
     judicial philosophy of each candidate to the federal bench. 
     So am I. I have taken the oath, and I know what it means: 
     follow the law, don't make it up to suit your own purposes. 
     Based on my own long acquaintance with Margaret Morrow, I 
     have every confidence she will respect the limitations of a 
     judicial position.''
       In their letters, some of Morrow's backers have sought to 
     clearly establish their bona fides with conservative 
     senators.
       ``I am a lifelong Republican from Orange County, 
     California,'' Costa Mesa attorney Andrew J. Guilford wrote 
     Hatch. ``I have never voted for a Democrat in any 
     presidential campaign. . . . I did not believe Anita Hill, I 
     am happy that Justice Clarence Thomas is on our Supreme Court 
     and I regret that [Robert] Bork is not on our Supreme Court. 
     It is partly my concern over the unfair destruction of Judge 
     Bork's judicial career that causes me to enthusiastically 
     endorse Margaret Morrow.''
       Backers of Morrow cite her intellect, character and record 
     of public service. As president of the Los Angeles County Bar 
     Assn., she instituted a voluntary program urging attorneys to 
     provide at least 35 hours of free legal services yearly for 
     the poor. And she was a member of the commission that drafted 
     an ethics code for Los Angeles city government.
       Morrow's advocates also assert that her speeches and 
     writings have been distorted beyond recognition by her foes, 
     particularly one sentence in a 1988 article on the initiative 
     process that is cited as prime evidence of her ``activist'' 
     proclivities.
       In the Los Angeles Lawyer magazine article, Morrow wrote: 
     ``The fact that initiatives are presented to a `legislature' 
     of 20 million people renders ephemeral any real hope of 
     intelligent voting by a majority.''
       The article was written in the wake of one of the most 
     expensive initiative campaigns in state history, highlighted 
     by five complicated measures dealing with insurance and 
     attorney's fees. At the time, many charged that that 
     television advertising about the measures was misleading, 
     prompting widespread calls for reform.
       Morrow's article did not call for abolition of initiatives. 
     The article noted that use of the initiative had escalated 
     dramatically in the 1980s, discussed possible reforms of the 
     initiative and legislative processes and urged lawyers to 
     play a role in improving government.
       Croskey, an appointee of Deukmejian, said he was stunned 
     that the article was cited as evidence that Morrow would 
     improperly legislate from the bench.
       ``She was making a profound and useful criticism of the 
     initiative process and how it could be improved,'' Croskey 
     said. ``To metamorphose that into the conclusion that she is 
     a judicial activist has no foundation.''
       On Friday, Croskey faxed a letter to Lott urging the 
     senator to bring the nomination to the floor for a vote. But 
     it seems unlikely that will happen before Congress adjourns 
     in the next few weeks. Lott, who has the power under Senate 
     procedure to hold up the nomination indefinitely, said a few 
     days ago that he felt no pressure to take any action on 
     judicial nominees during the remainder of the year.
       The White House declined to comment last week on Morrow's 
     nomination.

                          ____________________