[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 85 (Tuesday, May 21, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S3000]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                     CONFIRMATION OF DANIEL COLLINS

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, I rise today in opposition to the 
nomination of Daniel Collins to the United States Court of Appeals for 
the Ninth Circuit.
  Mr. Collins had been nominated to a California seat on the Ninth 
Circuit over the objections of Senator Harris and myself. Neither 
Senator Harris nor I returned blue slips for Mr. Collins, yet the 
majority moved forward with his nomination, disregarding our concerns.
  This vote on Mr. Collins follows on the heels of last week's vote on 
Kenneth Lee, another Ninth Circuit nominee who lacked blue slips from 
me and Senator Harris.
  So, once again, we see the majority violating Senate norms and 
traditions by ignoring home-State Senators, including the Judiciary 
Committee's ranking member, and stacking the courts with ideologues.
  This breakdown in Senate traditions is harmful to all of us, 
Democrats and Republicans. It is also unnecessary.
  As I have highlighted before, Democratic Senators have been willing 
to work with the White House to find consensus picks for the circuit 
courts, but that willingness has been rebuffed by the Trump 
administration and disregarded by the majority.
  The majority's decision to once again ignore blue slips is short-
sighted. After all, what goes around comes around.
  Senator Harris and I refused to return blue slips on Mr. Collins for 
several reasons.
  I have used a bipartisan instate screening commission to vet 
potential nominees to California district and Ninth Circuit seats for 
my entire career. These are highly respected lawyers from throughout 
the State, and they have reviewed and recommended nominees from 
Democratic and Republican administrations.
  My instate bipartisan commission raised concerns about Mr. Collins's 
rigidity, temperament, and history of taking positions in litigation 
for the purposes of overturning precedent and challenging legal 
boundaries.
  The role of a judge is to be an impartial arbiter, not an advocate 
and not someone with an agenda, particularly an agenda of overturning 
precedent.
  Based on this, I am concerned that Mr. Collins has not demonstrated 
and does not embody the characteristics that we expect of all Federal 
judges.
  I also believe that Mr. Collins's record on women's reproductive 
rights, executive power, civil liberties, and criminal justice matters 
puts him far outside the judicial mainstream.
  For example, Mr. Collins was a strong advocate for the Bush 
administration's use of military commissions to try enemy combatants 
held at Guantanamo Bay. He even went so far as to argue that the 
President's authority as Commander-in-Chief allowed him to bypass 
Congress and create these commissions without congressional approval.
  Mr. Collins also wrote a law review piece in which he argued that 
Miranda v. Arizona, a longstanding Supreme Court precedent that 
protects the rights of individuals, should be overturned.
  For the last decade, Mr. Collins has also defended numerous chemical 
and energy companies in lawsuits brought by homeowners, Tribes, and 
local governments. The plaintiffs in these lawsuits have argued that 
these companies contributed to climate change and its effects, such as 
increasing the severity of storms and causing sea levels to rise.
  In several of these lawsuits, Mr. Collins argued that climate change 
is not even real. For example, in a case representing Shell Oil 
Company, Mr. Collins wrote that ``climate change allegedly results from 
the aggregate effects of greenhouse gas emissions from billions of 
sources around the world accumulating in the global atmosphere over the 
course of centuries, and thus it cannot be attributed to . . . energy 
companies.''
  In addition, in questions for the record, he refused to acknowledge 
that climate change is real and that human activity contributes to it.
  I understand that Mr. Collins was representing clients in these 
lawsuits, but he was the one who chose which arguments to make, 
including arguments that climate change is not real. We cannot have a 
judge on the Ninth Circuit who denies climate change and its impacts.
  At his hearing, Mr. Collins was willing to answer questions from 
Republicans on his personal views, but not answer similar questions 
from Democrats.
  For instance, when asked how he ``feel[s] about the First Step Act,'' 
Mr. Collins said: ``I think that the First Step Act . . . appeared to 
me to be a balanced approach to reform some of the sentencing 
provisions which seemed unduly harsh.''
  But when asked by Senator Blumenthal whether he believed Brown v. 
Board of Education was correctly decided, Mr. Collins refused to 
answer.
  Nominees should not answer Republican questions and evade Democratic 
ones, especially when it comes to answering questions about Brown v. 
Board of Education, a monumental case whose correctness cannot and 
should not be questioned and has been answered by previous Republican 
nominees, including Chief Justice Roberts.
  Taken as a whole, I believe Mr. Collins is far outside the legal 
mainstream.
  Given concerns about his temperament and commitment to upholding 
precedent and given the positions he has taken on executive power, 
criminal justice, and other matters that could come before the Ninth 
Circuit, I cannot support Mr. Collins.
  I voted against Mr. Collins, and I urged my colleagues to do the 
same.

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