WASHINGTON (CN) — A week away from Washington appears to have smoothed — if only temporarily — partisan tensions on the Senate Judiciary Committee, as lawmakers Wednesday praised efforts to find common ground on the White House’s latest group of judicial nominees.
Bipartisanship has been a common refrain from the panel’s Democratic leadership in recent months as the Biden administration looks to fill dozens of vacancies on federal courts, many of which are located in Republican stronghold states like Florida and Missouri. Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin has repeatedly urged his GOP colleagues to work alongside the White House to find consensus candidates for these positions.
Durbin made that plea once again during a committee hearing Wednesday, as the panel met to consider several judicial appointees from red states. The Illinois Democrat repeated his argument that, under the Trump administration, he had worked with the White House in a similar capacity.
“The difference in political philosophy was obvious,” he said, “but we believe we found nominees who really would be neutral, or at least objective, in dealing with the law.”
Durbin also remixed his praise for a Senate tradition known as blue slipping, which allows lawmakers to approve court nominees in their home states. Both he and Senator Lindsey Graham, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, believe the process is useful “if it is used conscientiously and fairly,” Durbin said.
Graham, one of South Carolina’s two GOP senators, offered his own words of support for blue slipping.
“I’d like to have a say about who’s going to be a district judge in South Carolina,” he said. “I’m probably not going to get everybody I want from South Carolina, but I’ll have a say.”
Graham urged his colleagues not to back away from the longstanding tradition, which has come under fire by critics who say lawmakers can take advantage of the process to block judicial nominees for political purposes.
“I think it’s good for the judiciary to have people elected from the state having input as to who should have a lifetime appointment as a federal district court judge,” Graham said. “The only way this works is for us to recognize when you win,” he told Democrats, “and if you recognize that when we win, things are going to be different.”
Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse also praised committee leadership for their support for blue slipping.
“For the blue slip to work, there has to be good faith, there has to be reciprocity and there has to be a willingness to work together from the White House and from members of the Senate,” the senator said. “It’s not always easy, and to have this success today is significant and worth mentioning.”
Among the nominees the Judiciary Committee interviewed Wednesday was Jaquelyn Austin, tapped to fill a vacancy on the District of South Carolina. Graham said he had worked with the Biden administration to select her as a candidate and “found common ground” with the White House on her appointment.
The committee ranking member urged his Republican colleagues to continue working with Democrats in a similar fashion.
Carl Tobias, chair of the University of Richmond School of Law, said the warm exchange between Durbin and Graham could be valuable to the effort to fill empty seats on the judiciary.
“Their cooperation has been important to the success of Biden in nominating, and he and the Senate confirming, so many well-qualified, mainstream nominees who are diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, experience and ideology,” Tobias said.
Meanwhile, lawmakers Wednesday grilled Austin and a slate of other nominees, including four tapped for vacancies on Florida’s southern and middle district courts.
While the questioning was largely cordial, several Republican lawmakers dialed in on Kirk Sherriff, nominated to the Eastern District of California. Louisiana Senator John Kennedy needled Sherriff, who's currently an assistant U.S. attorney in the district, about his membership in the American Civil Liberties Union.
Kennedy pressed Sherriff on statements made by the ACLU’s Southern California branch which were critical of policing and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The nominee explained that he contributes to “charitable organizations that work on First Amendment issues,” and that he was not familiar with any of those positions.
Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, for her part, grilled Southern District of Florida nominee Jaqueline Becerra about her previous association with the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal organization.
Despite Blackburn’s concerns, Becerra replied that she had only been a member of that organization for a short time — from 2009 to 2010 — and that she wasn’t familiar with its current policy positions.
Blackburn also cast aspersions on Becerra’s impartiality, arguing that the nominee had defended comments made in a 2001 speech by now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor about diversity in the judiciary.
Becerra, currently a magistrate judge in the Southern District of Florida, replied that “a judge’s role … is to look at the facts honestly and scrupulously, to be a student of the law and the apply the facts in an impartial way.”
“I don’t believe a judge’s personal opinion or opinions should affect that,” she added.
Although the Judiciary Committee enjoyed a bit of bipartisan camaraderie, it remains to be seen whether those good feelings will last through even the end of the week.
The Senate’s legal affairs panel is scheduled to vote Thursday on a pair of controversial subpoenas related to a Democrat-led investigation into ethical lapses at the Supreme Court. Republicans have threatened to torpedo the committee’s regular business if Democrats follow through on the legal summonses — so far, lawmakers have on two separate occasions sidestepped a vote.
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