GOP Showcases Two Controversial Judges

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans on Tuesday picked Texas judge Priscilla Owen to be the flashpoint of a historic battle over the powers of the White House and minority parties in the Senate to shape the federal judiciary, with the vote expected to occur next week.

A small group of moderate senators worked furiously behind the scenes to head off what's been dubbed the "nuclear option" because of its potential for escalating parliamentary warfare between Democrats and Republicans that could stall President Bush's legislative agenda. Republicans announced that Owen's nomination for an appeals court seat will be the vehicle for the attempt to prohibit Democrats from blocking Bush's nominees through filibuster threats that require 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to overcome shortly after she and another stalled nominee, California judge Janice Rogers Brown, met with the president at the White House and later with Senate GOP leaders at the Capitol. Owen and Brown did not speak to the media at either location, though they appeared at a photo shoot with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

The meetings came a day before Frist planned to bring Owen's nomination back to the Senate floor for confirmation. Republican aides said that a test vote on her nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans was expected early next week.

If that vote is not successful, then Frist plans to call a vote on banning judicial filibusters, aides said.

Frist insists that all judicial nominees deserve confirmation votes. "I've made it clear what the principle is, a fair up-or-down vote," he said.

But Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada has refused to give up Democrats' ability to block Supreme Court and lower court nominees they consider too extreme. Court watchers think a Supreme Court vacancy could happen sometime this year.

"The goal of the Republican leadership and their allies in the White House is to pave the way for a Supreme Court nominee who would only need 50 votes for confirmation rather than 60," the number of senators needed to maintain a filibuster, Reid said.

Democrats have prevented final votes on 10 of Bush's first-term appeals court nominees, and have threatened to do the same this year to seven the president renominated, including Brown and Owen. Frist has threatened to try to block the Democrats' use of the filibuster, a parliamentary device that can be overcome only by a majority of 60 votes or higher.

It requires only 51 votes to approve a nominee once a vote is called in the 100-member Senate. Likewise, Frist could prevail with 51 votes supporting his move to rule filibusters out-of-order when used to block a confirmation vote.

Neither side appears certain it has enough votes to prevail if the issue is put to a test.

The White House tried to have it both ways on Tuesday - letting it be known that Owen and Brown were spending much of the day there at the same time the administration was insisting it was remaining hands-off as Senate leaders decided how to proceed.

"We've always stayed out of Senate procedural or congressional procedural matters," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

While Owen and Brown shuttled between the White House and the Capitol, a small cadre of senators worked to avoid a showdown over nominations.

A small group of Democrats have floated a proposal to clear the way for confirmation of some of Bush's blocked appointees. If enough Republicans and Democrats agreed to a compromise of their own, they might be able to impose it on the leadership if necessary.

Under the deal, Republicans would have to pledge no change through 2006 in the Senate's rules that allow filibusters against judicial nominees. For their part, Democrats would commit not to block votes on Bush's Supreme Court or appeals court nominees during the same period, except in extreme circumstances.

Each member would be free to determine what constituted an extreme circumstance, but Republicans would bind themselves to not changing the filibuster rule for the next two years.

a historic battle over the powers of the White House and minority parties in the Senate

"powers of the White House" = the majority political party

"and minority parties in the Senate" -- there is no such animal as "minority parties" in the Senate.

There is only one MINORITY party in the Senate.

That would be the Democratic Party - the political party that is the minority party. The Republican Party has more Senator's than does the 'Rat party, therefore the 'Rat party IS the minority party in the Senate.

They don't like it.

Ram it down their collective lizard, whinning butt, 'Rat throat.

NOW!

LVM

I've been following her court decisions for years. JRB is decent, fair and tough...everything that irritates the liberals.

Source: UCLA LAW COMMUNITY IN THE NEWS

April 29, 2001

The San Francisco Chronicle
Newsmaker Profile

On first take, it's hard to believe that Janice Rogers Brown '77, the daughter of Alabama sharecroppers and the first African American woman on the California Supreme Court, would write a decision jeopardizing hundreds of affirmative action programs throughout the state.

After four years as a justice, Brown has staked a claim for herself as the outspoken conservative on a court steering a moderate course. Her opinions are pointed and provocative, and she doesn't mind taking swipes at her colleagues.

Brown is best known for her November decision upholding Proposition 209, the 1996 voter-approved initiative barring preferential treatment for women and minorities. In writing the majority opinion, Brown attacked the entire history of affirmative action, a move that Chief Justice Ronald George, in a rare dissent, condemned as being "unnecessary and inappropriate."

Ward Connerly, one of the prime backers in the 1996 initiative, is a big fan of Brown's. He says she has "a profound respect for civil rights," but also believes in individual responsibility. Although she is a prominent minority woman, he said, "she doesn't carry on her shoulders the burdens of anybody else or the expectations of anybody else."

A liberal in her college days, the 51-year-old justice became a conservative after law school convinced her that the courts should be not be used for sweeping social changes. She is a quiet, intensely private person--Brown refused repeated requests to be interviewed for this story and others. In court, she asks few questions when lawyers argue their cases. But when she writes an opinion, she becomes a pugnacious street fighter on legal-size paper.

Brown sprinkles her decisions with quotes and characters from Plato's "Republic," George Washington's farewell address, John Grisham novels and songwriter Billy Preston's 1970s song "Nothing From Nothing Leaves Nothing."

Her defenders say that Brown is motivated by a sense of justice, not by any preconceived notions or political beliefs. Her passions and forthright opinions came through in the majority opinion she wrote in the Proposition 209 case. With the court deeply divided, Brown wrote a majority opinion that stung liberals and minorities because of her condemnation of several key civil rights rulings.

Brown was born in Greenville, Ala., about 50 miles south of Montgomery. As a child growing up in the segregated South, she was surrounded by color barriers in schools, restaurants and hospitals. After graduating from UCLA law school, Brown spent eight years at the state attorney general's office working on both civil and criminal cases. In 1991, she became Wilson's legal affairs secretary, advising him on such issues as term limits, executions and reapportionment. Wilson appointed her to the state Court of Appeal in October 1994. In May 1996, she was confirmed to the state Supreme Court.

Justice Brown--in her own words--Justice Janice Rogers Brown may ask few questions in court, but she holds little back in written opinions. Brown has a broad sense of history, an undeniable literary flair and a tendency to fling a few zingers. While all of her decisions can be lively, she saves most of her rhetorical punches for dissenting opinions. Here is a sampling--In a 1997 decision that allowed cities to clear the streets of gang members who annoy or intimidate residents, she wrote: "Liberty unrestrained is an invitation to anarchy"--She backed drug testing for both job applicants and current employees up for promotion in government, calling it one of the trade-offs of being a public employee. "Such choices are neither easy nor comfortable," she wrote. "But that is life. Sometimes beauty is fierce; love is tough; and freedom is painful"--When the court ruled that the governor and Legislature could appoint members of the State Bar Court, a power that previously belonged solely to the state Supreme Court, Brown took a jab at colleagues in her dissenting opinion: "The preservation of a viable constitutional government is not a task for wimps"--She was also aghast when the majority allowed a judge to ban racial slurs in the workplace, saying they had frivolously brushed away free speech rights. "I can conceive no imprisonment so complete, no subjugation so absolute, no debasement so abject as the enslavement of the mind"--In a relatively obscure antitrust case, she offered this reminder to her senior colleagues: "The quixotic desire to do good, be universally fair and make everybody happy is understandable. Indeed, the majority's zeal is more than a little endearing. There is only one problem with this approach. We are a court."

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