Where I stand—Brian Greenspun: Don’t lower the bar

Tuesday, April 24, 2001 | 9 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

I LOVE perspective. Especially in these times of instant news cycles and Internet mania, when political or other agendas get promoted well ahead of the facts, leaving the public more in the dark than is healthy in a democratic society.

That has been especially true with regard to the recent decision by President Bush to undo 50 years of precedence by removing the American Bar Association from its role as a screening institution for federal judicial selections. There are some elements from the conservative wing of the Republican Party who have convinced themselves and others -- most notably, the president -- that the ABA has no more right or responsibility in the selection process than the average man on the street.

Nothing could be further from the truth, because ever since former President Dwight D. Eisenhower called upon the ABA to help him take politics out of the selection equation, it has done so in a way that encouraged every president since to call upon it for help. Until now.

Now politics has taken over even this most important function of choosing those people for lifetime judicial appointments, and that does not bode well for our democracy. Rather than trying to explain the nature and function of the ABA's efforts for the past half century, I have a letter from Martha Barnett who is the president of the ABA.

In it she explains the role of the ABA Standing Committee and the lengths to which that organization has gone to remove politics completely from its charge of helping presidents for the past 50 years make some of their most enduring decisions.

I am reprinting that letter in this space because it is vital to all Americans that we understand the facts. That is the only way we can separate the truth from the political fictions we are often sold for purposes that have far more to do with power than with progress.

Martha W. Barnett's letter follows:

"A rush of heat and sizzle -- with little light or substance -- has characterized recent public debate about the role of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary in the federal judicial selection process. Too often, the debate has proceeded with little understanding of what the ABA Standing Committee does and why, how it goes about its task, and -- just as important -- what the ABA does not do.

"These are extremely important questions. Federal judges are the ultimate guardians of the rights of all Americans. To ensure that they are independent from partisan politics, the Constitution guarantees them lifetime tenure. A federal judge cannot be fired or forced to resign just because some politician doesn't like the decisions the judge is making. And in turn no one should be appointed to such a position who is not fully competent to undertake it, or simply because they are friends or supporters of a politician.

"In 1953 President Eisenhower was beset by campaign loyalists who sought as their political rewards just such lifetime appointments to the federal bench. He looked for a buffer, something that would allow him to make quality and competence the standard for an appointment rather than politics. He asked the American Bar Association to become that buffer, to evaluate the professional qualifications of candidates for the federal bench.

"Eisenhower knew that the ABA was in a perfect position to reach into the legal community and to talk to a candidate's peers and adversaries, judges and community leaders, the people who knew first-hand about the candidate's qualifications.

"The process worked. In fact, it worked so well that every later president, Democrat and Republican alike, continued to ask the Standing Committee to provide this same public service. For nearly 50 years the process has helped to produce a federal judiciary that is the envy of the world, while insulating the presidents from the pressures of campaign supporters.

"The committee examines only a candidate's professional qualifications: integrity, judicial temperament and professional competence. What it does not look at is the candidate's politics or ideology. It is true that the ABA as a national organization represents the views of its members on matters of law and justice, matters that sometimes are the subject of heated political debate. It is not true that the ABA committee considers those views when evaluating a judicial candidate.

"The committee operates independently from the ABA itself, so independently that no member of the ABA who is not on the committee -- not even the ABA president -- knows who is being evaluated or what the committee has concluded until the evaluations are revealed to the public by the Senate.

"Because the American Bar Association believes the public wants judges who are professionally qualified, we will continue with our volunteer efforts. We will continue to conduct a thorough and independent peer review of the professional qualifications of judicial nominees, and we will continue to provide our evaluations of nominees to the Senate and to the Administration. We will not let the public down."