Feinstein decries Senate Judiciary Committee’s nomination process

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein voiced strenuous objections to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s nomination process Tuesday morning, chastising her colleagues for holding hearings on judicial nominees who have not yet been vetted by the American Bar Association.

Feinstein implied at the hearing that the Repubican-controlled committee, chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is moving ahead as quickly as possible to place nominees of President Donald J. Trump on the federal bench, trampling recent norms for judicial nominations.

The Democratic California senator, who is the ranking member of the committee, said two of the judges being considered have not yet received a ranking from the ABA: Brett Joseph Talley, a nominee for the Middle District of Alabama, and Holly Lou Teeter, who is slated to take the bench for the District of Kansas.

Feinstein argued that the lack of a ranking doesn’t just leave senators with less information, but that it also implies that the ABA probably doesn’t view the nominees as fit to serve.

“I understand that for two nominees today, their ratings are not available because the ABA needs more time to conduct a second evaluation,” she said. “When this has happened in the past, it’s been because there’s a strong possibility that the nominee could be rated ‘not qualified.’”

Feinstein added that the only reason the ABA asks for a second evaluation of a candidate is because it is concerned about the nominee’s qualifications.

Matt Cimento, a spokesman for the ABA, confirmed that a second evaluation is called for when the first evaluator arrives at a “not qualfied” rating.

The senator’s office contended that this is not the first time the committee has pushed through nominees without receiving an ABA rating, pointing to comments Feinstein made at another nomination hearing in June.

At the time, Feinstein said two out of five of Trump’s judicial nominees up until that point had gone through hearings without receiving an ABA rating.

The senator’s staff indicated that only seven out of more than 320 judicial nominees under President George W. Bush went through hearings without receiving an ABA rating first. They added that under President Barack Obama, the ABA was given notice on any nominations before they were announced, giving the legal organization ample time to prepare ratings for each of them.

Cimento confirmed this as well, adding that prior to the Trump presidency, the seven judges approved without ABA ratings under the Bush administration were the only judges to get that treatment since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.

Feinstein went on to say that, in cases where a nominee receives a “not qualified” rating, the ABA has testified at judicial nomination hearings in the past, to explain the reasoning behind its rating. She said the committee would be robbed of that opportunity under the current arrangement.

None of the senators on hand responded to Feinstein’s remarks during the hearing. Grassley and Sen.Mike Lee, R-Utah, who chaired the hearing, didn’t respond to requests for comment. But Lee did weigh in on the judicial nomination process at the beginning of the hearing.

Lee talked about the history of the “blue-slip” process, which has given senators the equivalent of a veto over judicial nominees in their home states.

Some Senate Democrats, including Feinstein, have decried the committee’s apparent departure from that practice over the past few months, which they contend is a part of an effort by the GOP to ramrod as many judges through the committee as quickly as possible.

Republican members of the committee have not officially said they will do away with the blue slip veto power.

But they have repeatedly made statements that the tradition of giving that power to senators over their home state judicial nominations is a relatively recent development and shouldn’t be given much weight, suggesting they do not intend to continue the practice.

Lee said the blue slip process wasn’t first used as a de facto veto until 1955 and that chairmen of the committee have had widely varied approaches in honoring the practice. He said two out of the last eight chairmen fully honored the veto power.

“The remaining six either said that the blue slip was not a veto or did not affirmatively treat the blue slip as if it were a veto,” he said. “So the practice even since 1955 is itself mixed. And of course, those first 128 years of the republic also count in a very meaningful way.”