Federal judgeships on shaky ground

Mark D. Preston

Thursday, June 3, 1999 | 10:54 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- An Iowa senator could sink Nevada's chances of receiving two more federal judgeships approved recently by the Senate in its version of the crime bill.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, and ranking minority member Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., agreed to add funding for nine new judgeships spread across three states including Nevada. Florida would receive four new judgeships and Arizona would get three.

Jeanne Lopatto, a spokeswoman for the Judiciary Committee, said the two senators agreed to add funding to create the new judgeships in "areas where there is a demonstrable need for more judges to handle the workload for the respected judicial circuits."

Lopatto said Sen. Richard Bryan and Sen. Harry Reid, both D-Nev., urged Hatch and Leahy to fund two more judgeships. Currently, Nevada has four full-time judges and two "senior" judges who have a limited workload.

"There is no state in the nation with as great a need for new federal district judges as Nevada," Bryan said. "One of the most basic tenants of our judicial system is the right to a speedy trial, and the addition of these federal judges will help us maintain this basic right for every Nevada."

But one member of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, is enraged that Hatch and Leahy included funding for the nine new judgeships. Grassley is the chairman of the Administrative Oversight and the Courts subcommittee which has jurisdiction over new federal judgeships. Hatch and Leahy included funding for the new judgeships in their "manager's amendment" and did not inform Grassley of their intentions.