Legal News

Meet David Hamilton, Obama?s Possible First Appellate Court Pick

By Ashby Jones

Followers of the federal judiciary have been waiting eagerly for a sign, any sign, indicating what type of judge President Obama would look to in filling vacancies on the federal appellate courts. Finally, they have a name: David F. Hamilton, a trial court judge from Indiana known as a political moderate. According to a story in Tuesday’s NYT, Hamilton is the likely pick to fill the lone vacancy on the Seventh Circuit, which hears appeals from federal trial courts in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.

Judge Hamilton (Haverford (Go Black Squirrels!), Yale Law) was appointed to the district court in Indianapolis in 1994 by President Clinton and became the chief judge of that court early last year. He served as counsel to Senator Evan Bayh when Bayh was the state's governor; he is also a nephew of former Representative Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana.

So, is the pick of a political moderate a harbinger of things to come from the Obama administration? Quite possibly. A senior administration official quoted by the NYT said the pick should serve "as a kind of signal" about the kind of nominees Obama will select, adding that the White House was hoping to reduce the partisan contentiousness of judicial confirmation battles of recent years.

Hamilton received attention for two rulings striking down actions of conservatives in the Indiana legislature. In 2005, he made news by ruling that the legislature was prohibited from beginning its sessions with overtly Christian prayers. On appeal, however, a panel of the Seventh Circuit dismissed the ruling, saying the people in whose name the American Civil Liberties Union had brought the suit lacked standing because they had not been harmed by the prayers.

In 2008, Judge Hamilton struck down as unconstitutional an amendment to the state law requiring convicted sex offenders to provide the authorities with personal information, including any e-mail addresses or user names. The judge said the amendment cut into the heart of a person's right to privacy in his home.

"The ability of the individual to retreat into his home and therefore to be free from unreasonable intrusion by the government stands at the very core" of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches, he said.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 17, 2009 (boomark / email).