[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 101 (Thursday, June 26, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4101-S4103]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Cloture Motion
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The bill clerk read as follows:
[[Page S4102]]
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination of
Cheryl Ann Krause, of New Jersey, to be United States Circuit
Judge for the Third Circuit.
Harry Reid, Patrick J. Leahy, Richard J. Durbin, Patty
Murray, Jack Reed, Sheldon Whitehouse, Christopher A.
Coons, Jeff Merkley, Sherrod Brown, Tom Harkin, Richard
Blumenthal, Benjamin L. Cardin, Angus S. King, Jr.,
Thomas R. Carper, Debbie Stabenow, Elizabeth Warren,
Amy Klobuchar.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today, we will vote to defeat the
filibuster against the nomination of Cheryl Krause to serve on the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Her nomination has the strong
bipartisan support of Pennsylvania Senators, Senator Bob Casey and
Senator Patrick Toomey. The American Bar Association has unanimously
given her their highest rating of ``well qualified.'' The Senate
Judiciary Committee reported her unanimously by voice vote to the full
Senate this past April, nearly 3 months ago.
Ms. Krause should already have been confirmed and be at work for the
American people. Instead, Senate Republicans continue to filibuster
qualified, uncontroversial nominees who in previous years would have
been confirmed without any delay. This is deeply unfair to all
Americans seeking access to justice and to the judicial nominees who,
like Cheryl Krause, have had distinguished careers in the law. Of the
54 judicial nominees filibustered this year, 30 have been confirmed
unanimously, without a single vote against them. These filibusters are
undeserved, and should stop.
Ms. Krause has worked in private practice for over a decade,
including as a partner at Dechert LLP and a shareholder at Hangley,
Aronchick Segal, & Pudlin. Her work has focused on complex criminal
defense matters in securities fraud, antitrust, and the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act. She has also taught courses on appellate advocacy, cyber
crime, and judicial decisionmaking at University of Pennsylvania Law
School and Stanford Law School. Professors from both universities have
written in strong support for her nomination, and I ask consent that
these letters be included in the Record.
From 1997 to 2002, Ms. Krause served as an assistant U.S. attorney in
the Southern District of New York, where she distinguished herself as
the lead prosecutor in the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.
Before becoming a prosecutor, she worked as an associate at the
prestigious firm of Davis, Polk, & Wardwell and as a law clerk at
Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe LLP. After graduating with honors
from Stanford Law School, she served as a law clerk to Judge Alex
Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1993
to 1994 and to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court from
1994 to 1995.
Her commitment both to the practice of law and to her community in
Philadelphia has been admirable. In 2011, as part of partnership
between Dechert LLP and the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia,
Ms. Krause brought a class action lawsuit in the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania on behalf of over 1,000 autistic students within the
school district of Pennsylvania challenging the school district's
transfer of these students from school to school without adequate
notice to parents. After 2 years of litigation, Ms. Krause was
successful, and the district court required the school district to
redevelop its policy. Ms. Krause has also helped to launch the
Philadelphia Project, a program that provides legal services to
families of children with disabilities in the school district of
Philadelphia.
She is well qualified to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Third Circuit. Her record of accomplishments is unquestionable, as is
her dedication to the rule of law and the Constitution. I urge my
colleagues to vote to defeat the filibuster against this excellent
nominee.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Stanford Law School,
Stanford, CA, March 10, 2014.
Subject: Nomination of Cheryl A. Krause to the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Third Circuit
Hon. Patrick Leahy,
Chair, Committee on the Judiciary,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Hon. Charles Grassley,
Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Grassley: We write
as the three former deans and the current dean of Stanford
Law School to express our enthusiastic support for Cheryl A.
Krause, who has been nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit.
Cheryl Krause graduated at the top of her class at Stanford
Law School in 1993. She was first in her class after her
first year of law school, and she and her partner were the
champions of the school-wide Kirkwood Moot Court Competition.
Ms. Krause herself was selected as the best oral advocate in
that final round. Following her graduation from law school,
she clerked for Judge Kozinski, now the Chief Judge of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and for U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Following her
clerkships, she has pursued a wonderfully varied career--as a
law teacher, law firm lawyer and partner, and an Assistant
United States attorney. She has been repeatedly recognized as
one of the finest lawyers in the United States. Along the
way, she has somehow found time to perform an enormous amount
of pro bono legal representation and has been repeatedly
recognized for those contributions as well.
We write to tell you about Ms. Krause's reputation at
Stanford. That reputation can only be captured through a
series of adjectives that faculty use to describe their
impression of her: exceptional, stellar, admirable,
brilliant, incomparable. She is remembered as an academic
stand-out in and out of the classroom, a student leader, a
superb young lawyer, and a student who, faculty predicted,
would always combine a challenging legal practice with pro
bono and public service throughout her career.
Faculty members describe her as ``brilliant,'' ``among the
small handful of top students I have ever taught'' ``the best
student oral advocate I have ever seen,'' ``truly possessing
a judicial temperament,'' and ``ideally qualified
temperamentally and intellectually suited'' to be a judge.
Ms. Krause's career after law school has fulfilled these
impressions and predictions and more. She has forged a
remarkable path as a lawyer, and it is one that has prepared
her well for a career on the bench.
We hope that you will give her your most serious
consideration. We are optimistic that you will find her
record as impressive as that of her former teachers and
mentors at Stanford Law School.
Sincerely,
Paul Brest,
Professor Emeritus and former Dean, Stanford Law School.
Kathleen M. Sullivan,
Partner, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, (former Dean,
Stanford Law School).
Larry Kramer,
President, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, (former
Dean, Stanford Law School).
M. Elizabeth Magill,
Dean and Richard E. Lang Professor of Law, Stanford Law
School.
____
University of Pennsylvania
Law School,
Philadelphia, PA, March 7, 2014.
Re Cheryl Ann Krause.
Hon. Patrick Leahy,
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Charles Grassley,
Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Grassley: As faculty
members at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who have
had the privilege of working with Cheryl Ann Krause, we write
to express our enthusiastic support of her nomination to the
U. S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Since she was first appointed a Lecturer in Law in 2003,
Cheryl has taught Penn Law courses in cybercrime, evidence,
and appellate advocacy, and has guest-lectured in three
courses taught by other faculty. As a partner at the Dechert
firm, Cheryl has been the lead person teaching our Federal
Appellate Litigation Externship, in which Penn Law students
are assigned to litigation teams at Dechert working on pro
bono cases pending before the Third Circuit. In the early
2000s, Cheryl was a Barrister member of the University of
Pennsylvania Law School American Inn of Court (an
organization that seeks to promote ethics and professionalism
by bringing together law students, practitioners, and judges
for periodic discussions on legal issues), and she
participated in presenting three Inn of Court programs on
different topics.
In her teaching and mentoring at the Law School, Cheryl has
demonstrated the talents that will make her a first-rate
judge. Not
[[Page S4103]]
only does Cheryl bring to her tasks a powerful analytical
capacity, but also she has consistently displayed fair-
mindedness and intellectual curiosity. Her knack for
providing students and young lawyers with rigorous yet
constructive feedback signals that she would show respect to
the lawyers who appear before the Court while subjecting
their contentions to penetrating scrutiny. Cheryl possesses
excellent judgment and high integrity, and her interpersonal
skills would make her a valued and collegial member of the
Court.
In sum, we believe that Cheryl's legal acumen, temperament,
and experience make her a superb candidate for a seat on the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and we heartily
support her nomination.
Sincerely,
Stephanos Bibas, Professor of Law and Criminology,
Director, Supreme Court Clinic; Jill E. Fisch, Perry
Golkin Professor of Law, Co-Director, Institute for Law
and Economics; Paul M. George, Associate Dean for
Curriculum, Development and Biddle Law Library; Kermit
Roosevelt, Professor of Law; Theodore Ruger, Professor
of Law, Deputy Dean; Catherine T. Struve, Professor of
Law; Christopher S. Yoo, John H. Chestnut Professor of
Law, Communication, and Computer & Information Science,
Director, Center for Technology, Innovation &
Competition; Stephen B. Burbank, David Berger Professor
for the Administration of Justice; Michael A. Fitts,
Dean and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law; Seth F.
Kreimer, Kenneth W. Gemmill Professor of Law; David
Rudovsky, Senior Fellow; Louis S. Rulli, Practice
Professor of Law and Clinical Director; Amy L. Wax,
Robert Mundheim Professor of Law.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the
nomination of Cheryl Ann Krause, of New Jersey, to be United States
Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Begich) and
the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Udall) are necessarily absent.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) and the Senator from Mississippi
(Mr. Cochran).
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 57, nays 39, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 215 Ex.]
YEAS--57
Ayotte
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Boxer
Brown
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
Coons
Donnelly
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Hagan
Harkin
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Hirono
Johnson (SD)
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Landrieu
Leahy
Levin
Manchin
Markey
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Stabenow
Tester
Toomey
Udall (NM)
Walsh
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wyden
NAYS--39
Alexander
Barrasso
Blunt
Boozman
Burr
Chambliss
Coats
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
Cruz
Enzi
Fischer
Flake
Graham
Grassley
Hatch
Heller
Hoeven
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Johnson (WI)
Kirk
Lee
McCain
McConnell
Moran
Paul
Portman
Risch
Roberts
Rubio
Scott
Sessions
Shelby
Thune
Vitter
Wicker
NOT VOTING--4
Begich
Coburn
Cochran
Udall (CO)
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote the yeas are 57, the nays are 39.
The motion is agreed to.
The Republican whip.