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Hamilton, Davis Get Thumbs-Up from Senate Judicary Committee

By Ashby Jones

This isn’t an Article III blog, so we promise this isn’t something we’re going to start doing — tracking the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on appellate-judge nominees. But we’ve paid a good bit of attention to President Obama’s first appellate-judge picks, largely to gauge whether and to what degree they’d prompt controversy. So we’re going to pay attention, at least until the lay of the land becomes clearer.

Judging from the first couple to come up for a Senate Judiciary Committee vote, it’s still a bit murky. Southern District of Indiana judge David Hamilton, nominated for a seat on the Seventh Circuit, was approved by a 12-7 vote, which fell on straight party lines. District of Maryland judge Andre Davis was approved by a 16-3 vote. Both will now move to votes from the full Senate. (By a 17-2 vote, the committee also approved Thomas Perez to be assistant attorney general for civil rights.)

University of Richmond professor Carl Tobias, an expert on the federal judiciary, watched the debate prior to the votes, and called it “a likely precursor to what we might see with Judge Sotomayor.” Tobias said there was a lot of back and forth between Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) on the right side of the aisle and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) on the left. “There was much talk of empathy and the degree to which a judge’s background should influence their decision-making. You got the feeling we’re going to hear much more on this.”

According to this report in the Indiana Star, Sessions said he was "troubled by the nominees that we've seen to date,” adding that "nominees do have the potential, if they're activists, to promote political agendas, often times agendas that can’t be won at the ballot box or passed by Congress.” Sessions voted against both judicial nominees.

The nomination of Hamilton has proved to be a little controversial, largely because of one Establishment Clause case from 2005 in which he ordered the Speaker of the Indiana House to immediately stop the practice of "sectarian prayers" at the opening of the legislative session.

Said Mario Diaz, a director with Concerned Women of America, back in April: “Few things could violate Judge Hamilton's supposed 'separation of church and state' more than the state (i.e. Judge Hamilton) telling people they cannot pray in the name of Jesus." Click here, here and here for earlier LB posts on Hamilton.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 04, 2009 (boomark / email).