[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 160 (Thursday, November 6, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Page S14086]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS

  Mr. ENSIGN. Madam President, this morning I rise to talk about what 
has been happening in this Chamber with regard to judicial nominations, 
and especially those nominations that have been put forward by the 
President with respect to the circuit courts.
  The court of appeals is that branch in our Federal court system which 
is directly under the Supreme Court, an incredibly important place 
where a lot of judicial precedent is set.
  We have had several judges being filibustered this year by the other 
side; just recently, Charles Pickering, a wonderful man with incredible 
qualifications, incredible political courage. With all the debate that 
happened about him and his qualifications--people can check the 
Congressional Record for it--but the bottom line is this man deserves 
an up-or-down vote. If he is granted an up-or-down vote, he would be 
approved because he was able to get 54 votes against 43 negative votes. 
Unfortunately, there is a minority in the Senate choosing to 
filibuster. That 54 votes should be enough to put him on the circuit 
court where he deserves to be.
  I have no objection to people voting against judges. That is their 
right to do under the Constitution. But the Constitution specifically 
spells out only five instances where a supermajority is required in the 
Senate for approval, and moving to the consideration or the approval of 
the President's judicial nominees is not on that list.
  Why is this debate so important to have on whether we should allow 
the Senate to filibuster judges or whether we should just have straight 
up-or-down votes on judges after a good amount of debate? If one side, 
meaning one political party, chooses to filibuster judges, the other 
side is going to be forced to filibuster. In other words, a precedent 
is set.
  Someday the Democrats will get back in power in the White House and 
will be sending judges up to this body, and if they continue to 
filibuster the President's nominees, a precedent will be set, and our 
side will have no choice but to filibuster their judges. The reason is 
very simple: If they filibuster more conservative type judges, and we 
do not filibuster theirs, our court system will just go further and 
further to the left.
  Politics and the judiciary--we are supposed to try to separate those 
as much as possible, even though it is impossible to completely 
separate them.
  So, Madam President, I appeal to our colleagues on the other side 
that this obstructionism purely for political gain is a dangerous 
precedent to set in the Senate. We need to become statesmen in this 
body and do what is right for our Republic. This is really about the 
future of our Republic. Judges and the third branch of our Government 
have to have somewhat independence from the legislative branch and from 
the executive branch. It is critical, I believe, that we have a fair 
process going forward.
  The system really is broken at this point. Another problem we are 
going to face in the future by staging this political battle on judges 
is that good people are not going to want to go through the nomination. 
Miguel Estrada is the perfect example. He was an extraordinary nominee 
who would have made an extraordinary judge and the ugliness this 
process has become resulted in him asking the President to withdraw his 
nomination. The toll of was too great on him and on his family. He 
could not take it anymore.
  If we continue to drag more nominees through this political mess, it 
is going to be harder to get good people, the kind of people we want 
serving on the bench.
  I make this appeal to my colleagues: This nonsense going on with 
filibustering circuit court judges needs to stop. I respect the fact 
that Senators want complete debate. We should have full debate on 
judges. But once they have their full debate, their complete 
investigation, questions are asked and answered, then we need an up-or-
down vote, straight up-or-down vote. There is no place in the judicial 
nomination process for filibustering. If we do not correct this 
problem, and fix this broken process the future our judicial system 
will be hurt and it will be a great disservice to all Americans.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.

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