Legal News

The Next Justice? Push for the Nation?s First Hispanic Underway

By Ashby Jones

Barack Obama hasn’t yet taken the oath of office, and as of now, none of the Supreme Court Justices has indicated a desire to step down. But that’s not stopping interest groups from making their preferences known on who they’d like to see appointed next.

The latest, from Tony Mauro at Legal Times: the Hispanic National Bar Association is hoping that the next appointee is Hispanic. “What more unifying appointment could there be than a Hispanic justice?” asks Carlos Ortiz, a former president of the Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA). “It’s not just the right thing to do, but we deserve it.”

Last month, current HNBA president Roberta Romero wrote a letter to Obama urging him to “make history yet again” by nominating a Hispanic justice, thereby erasing the “unfortunate message” conveyed by a Supreme Court with no Hispanic members.

Mauro writes that nearly every list of possible Obama nominees includes Hispanics—most notably Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit (pictured). Others mentioned, according to Mauro: Judge Kim Wardlaw of the 9th Circuit (her mother was Mexican), U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo of Chicago, California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, and two Democratic U.S. senators—Ken Salazar of Colorado and Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

President George W. Bush’s early list of possible candidates was heavy with Hispanic names, many from his Texas days. Ortiz met with then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to press the issue, but Gonzales’ assurances turned out to be “lip service,” as Ortiz puts it now.

“It was a lack of will, a lack of commitment,” says current HNBA president Ramona Romero. “It was not because of the absence of qualified candidates.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 01, 2008 (boomark / email).