Seemingly consensus candidate for 9th Circuit seat faces little opposition

In a perfunctory Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Danielle Hunsaker described her humble childhood, textualist judicial philosophy, and reverence for the Supreme Court's signal civil rights decision Brown v. Board of Education.

Hunsaker, an Oregon state judge slated for a long-vacant Portland posting left in 2016 by now-Senior Circuit Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, faced little resistance from the few present committee members. She boasts bipartisan credentials -- a clerkship with the resolutely conservative O'Scannlain; an appointment to her current role by a Democratic governor -- and thanked both President Donald J. Trump and Oregon's Democratic senators in her prepared remarks Wednesday.

In an August letter to the White House, those senators -- Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley -- identified Hunsaker as one of four "highest ranked" candidates for the judgeship though they expressly reserved formal endorsement. Trump announced her nomination the next week, a sequence suggesting some measure of consensus between the president and home-state senators.

After meeting with Hunsaker this week, Wyden and Merkley returned "blue slips" to the Judiciary Committee, a traditional imprimatur both senators qualified by leaving their slips blank, their offices said, to indicate their ongoing consideration.

Bipartisan backing given a previous Trump nominee, now-Circuit Judge Mark J. Bennett, elicited objection from Republican Judiciary Committee members, but Hunsaker's Democratic support, however oblique, caused conservatives no disquiet Wednesday. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and three other Republicans casually invited her to endorse First Amendment protections and recite conservative orthodoxy as to gun rights and judicial restraint.

Hunsaker called the Constitution's free speech guarantee "an essential basis for our system" and professed reverence for the free exercise clause.

"Certainly as a person of firm religious faith myself, I hold those freedoms and guarantees very dear. I think our nation does," she said.

Pressed by Cruz on the Second Amendment's breadth, the native Oregonian offered a less personalized impression, stressing only that the Supreme Court has recognized the right to bear arms as an "individual and fundamental right."

"That's the law of the land, and that's my view of it," Hunsaker said.

Asked by multiple committee members about judicial philosophy, Hunsaker called herself a textualist, a self-styling common to Trump's nominees.

"I think a judge's role is to apply the law as written by the political bodies, to focus on those words and give them the meaning they would be understood to have in the public sphere," Hunsaker said. "Law is passed not just for lawyers but for people. It governs people, and I think it's important that courts focus on the public understanding of the words."

The lone Democrat at Wednesday's hearing, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, sought a more developed recitation of Hunsaker's jurisprudential views, asking her to affirm certain keystone Supreme Court decisions. The nominee allowed that Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 ruling declaring racial segregation in schools unconstitutional, was a "gem in American jurisprudence" but said expressing her personal views on other cases would be improper. When Blumenthal pressed her about Griswold v. Connecticut's finding of privacy rights entailed in constitutional "penumbras," Hunsaker replied only the ruling was "the law of the land."

In her introductory statement Hunsaker, a University of Idaho School of Law graduate, thanked her husband of 23 years and two children and credited her parents with instilling in her a determined work ethic throughout a modest upbringing.

"We didn't have a lot when I was growing up," Hunsaker said. "But I had all of the things that matter, including love, and family support, and a home that taught me a great sense of values and hard work."

Seemingly satisfied with the candidate's responses -- and those of 2nd Circuit nominee William Nardini, who was being reviewed alongside Hunsaker -- senators concluded their questioning after just over 30 minutes. Hunsaker and Nardini now await a formal committee vote that would send their nominations to the full Senate for confirmation.