Rudy and his justices will emulate the UN.
Posted on 03/01/2007 8:24:02 AM PST by Mr. Brightside
Giuliani-Appointed Judges Tend to Lean to the Left
By: Ben Smith
February 28, 2007 06:30 PM EST
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani addresses a Hoover Institution luncheon at the Willard Hotel in Washington DC. (Patrick G. Ryan)
When Rudy Giuliani faces Republicans concerned about his support of gay rights and legal abortion, he reassures them that he is a conservative on the decisions that matter most.
"I would want judges who are strict constructionists because I am," he told South Carolina Republicans last month. "Those are the kinds of justices I would appoint -- Scalia, Alito and Roberts."
But most of Giuliani's judicial appointments during his eight years as mayor of New York were hardly in the model of Chief Justice John Roberts or Samuel Alito -- much less aggressive conservatives in the mold of Antonin Scalia.
A Politico review of the 75 judges Giuliani appointed to three of New York state's lower courts found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 8 to 1. One of his appointments was an officer of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Judges. Another ruled that the state law banning liquor sales on Sundays was unconstitutional because it was insufficiently secular.
A third, an abortion-rights supporter, later made it to the federal bench in part because New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a liberal Democrat, said he liked her ideology.
Cumulatively, Giuilani's record was enough to win applause from people like Kelli Conlin, the head of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, the state's leading abortion-rights group. "They were decent, moderate people," she said.
"I don't think he was looking for someone who was particularly conservative," added Barry Kamins, a Democrat who chaired the panel of the Bar Association of the City of New York, which reviewed Giuliani's appointments. "He picked a variety from both sides of the spectrum. They were qualified, even-tempered, academically strong."
That is the kind of praise that will amount to damnation (not necessarily faint) among some of the people Giuliani will be trying to impress in Washington on Friday, when he addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference. The group is filled with social conservatives, for whom the effort to recast the ideological orientation of the federal judiciary has been a generation-long project. Giuliani already faced a high threshold of skepticism from many of these activists because of his comparatively liberal record on such hot-button issues as abortion rights, tolerance of gays and gun control.
Giuliani's judicial appointments continue to win good reviews in New York legal circles for being what conservatives sometimes say they want: competent lawyers selected with no regard to "litmus tests" on hot-button social issues. Many of these people were in the mode of Giuliani himself: tough-on-crime former prosecutors with reformist streaks and muted ideologies.
"He took it very seriously -- he spent a lot of time with these candidates," recalled Paul Curran, a Republican and former U.S. attorney who chaired Giuliani's Commission on Judicial Nominations. "He was looking for judges who were willing to enforce the laws."
The mayor of New York appoints judges to three of the state's lowest courts, the Criminal Court and Family Court, which deal with lower-grade crimes than the state's Supreme Court, the main trial court and the Civil Court, which deals in relatively small financial disputes.
When Giuliani took office in 1994, he inherited a system of judicial appointments created by one of his predecessors, Ed Koch, and designed to insulate the courts from political influence. Under the system, the mayor appoints members of an independent panel. Aspiring judges apply to the panel, which recommends three candidates for each vacancy. The mayor chooses among the three.
Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney, and top aides who remain close to him, Dennison Young and Michael Hess, reviewed the applications.
Giuliani cast himself in New York not as a conservative (he had actually run on the Liberal Party line) but as a reformer. Though at least 50 of his 75 appointees were registered Democrats (only six were registered Republicans), Giuliani also won praise for, some say, appointing fewer judges with ties to local Democratic politics than his predecessors.
"It was not people coming out of the clubhouses, which is what I'd seen earlier," said Charles Moerdler, a member of the Commission on Judicial Nominations who had served other mayors in the same capacity. "I did not support Rudy (the first time he ran) because he was too conservative for me, so I was very alert to that, but I didn't see any litmus tests on his part," he said.
Giuliani's judges serve across New York's courts, where they're more likely to encounter misdemeanant celebrities -- Boy George and Naomi Campbell have appeared recently in front of his appointees -- than they are to tangle with the Establishment Clause. Some, like a Family Court judge who ruled that an unmarried couple couldn't adopt, would please national conservatives. But many of their occasional forays into jurisprudence would likely make Scalia wince.
Charles Posner, a Brooklyn judge appointed by Giuliani, made the kind of decision that keeps conservatives up nights when he was asked to levy a fine against a shopkeeper, Abdulsam Yafee, who had illegally sold beer at 3:30 a.m. on a Sunday. In an unusual, lengthy 2004 ruling, Posner found that "there is no secular reason why beer cannot be sold on Sunday morning as opposed to any other morning."
Noting that Sunday is only the Christian Sabbath, Posner continued, "Other than this entanglement with religion, there is no rational basis for mandating Sunday as a day of rest as opposed to any other day."
Giuliani was out of office at the time of the decision and, in any case, had no say over his appointees' rulings. His spokeswoman, Maria Comella, declined to comment on the difference between the judges he appointed and those he promises to appoint.
Another Giuliani appointee reached a socially conservative verdict by a means that might not please strict constructionists. Judge Michael Sonberg denied a motion by two Bronx strip-club owners to dismiss prostitution charges against them that were based on dancers' offering "lap dances" to an undercover officer.
Sonberg ruled that the changing "cultural and sexual practices" of the previous two decades permitted him to alter the definition of prostitution.
"Statutory construction cannot remain static while entrepreneurial creativity brings forth heretofore unimagined sexual 'diversions,' " he wrote in a ruling that would have pleased social conservatives while, perhaps, alarming strict constructionists and strippers alike.
More troubling to some of the social conservatives Giuliani is courting, however, would have been Sonberg's other affiliation: When he was appointed in 1995, he was already an officer of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Judges, a professional group. After his appointment, he became the group's president.
Laboring in the state's lower courts, few of Giuliani's other appointees show signs of ideological leanings. Two, however, were appointed to federal district courts -- one of them, Richard Berman, by President Bill Clinton. The other, Dora Irizarry, was a Bush nominee considered so liberal that Schumer pushed her nomination through.
Irizarry, appointed by Giuliani to the Bronx Criminal Court in 1996, had disclosed that she considers herself "pro-choice" during her 2002 campaign for New York state attorney general. Her appointment to the federal bench was almost derailed when the American Bar Association ruled her "not qualified" on the grounds that as a state judge, she had been "gratuitously rude and abrasive" and "flew off the handle in a rage."
But to Schumer, who led the fight against Bush's appellate judges, Irizarry was a Republican he could live with.
"Temperament is not at the top of my list," Schumer explained at the time, when asked why he supported the former Giuliani appointee. "Ideology is key."
You don't have to like the G man, that's fine, but to call him a RINO or to say he's not "conservative" is patently ignorant.
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Say it, brother... I'm not a Rudy fan, but he's certainly much better than any of the Demodogs who are in that primary.
Rudy and his justices will emulate the UN.
Dole and GHWB were not RINOs. They were moderately conservative republicans, but were not inspiring, to say the least. Bush would have won if the stalking horse didn't get 19% of the vote.
There are 23,000 members of the New York City Bar. To say that Rudy couldn't find more than 7 qualified Republicans is ludicrous. You're right. Rudy selected lawyers who think like him...and they were mostly Dems.
Well, well, well. Quite the conservative we have here...
I suppose we should expect a minimum of 17 Rudy threads a day for the next 613 days.
Democrats outnumber Republicans 8 to 1 in New York City???
Shocked! Shocked, I tell you!!
At a minimum, yes.
lol
What is the pool of available Judges like in New York? Rudy can't pick an Alabama Judge.
It's past time delusion conservatives got their heads of their behinds and realize Rudy is a RINO and would be a complete disaster if elected to office.
Would global warming alarmist and utter ignorance and disregard for the 2nd Amendment be social issues that only socons are worried about?
I think not.
Most here would forgive a candidate for having one or two glaring deficencies or skeletons in the closet.
That is not the case with Rudy. Law and order is great. Giving the finger to the Constitutional Amendment most dear to millions of conservatives as part of that L&O is not.
Thinking man may have an impact on global warming is arguable, but reasonable. Praising Arnie's boondoggle efforts and postitioning himself left of Algore is nuts.
Giuliani is pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, pro-man made global warming, pro-control, pro-hate crimes legislation, increased spending during his second term in office and nominated liberal judges to the judiciary.
Why in the world would any conservative support such a candidate?
Conservatives have no chance of making any gains in this nation as long as a significant percentage remain dumb and deluded.
In my lifetime there is only one person that I strongly regretted voting for: George Ryan of Illinois.
He ran as conservative but governed like a liberal.
Single-handidly he destroyed the GOP in Illinois.
Since then I've taken knowing more about the candidates before voting more seriously.
Most presidents become more liberal once elected, so I say let's support a real pro-life,pro-troops, pro-2nd amendment, protect our borders candidate.
Duncan Hunter is the man.
The fact that he is also a veteran and his son served in Iraq seperates him from the Democrats: Hillary, Obama and Edwards.
Since 1978, merit selection has been used to select judges of New York City’s criminal and family courts and to fill mid-term vacancies on the city’s civil court. Established by executive order, the mayor’s advisory committee on the judiciary evaluates applicants and nominates highly qualified candidates. The mayor may not appoint a judge who has not been nominated by the committee.http://www.ajs.org/js/NY_methods.htm
Now the $64,000 question is, how are folks chosen to serve on this wondrous "advisory committee" chosen? Are they all chosen by the current mayor, as the term "advisory" would suggest? If so, then Rudy deserves more blame than he otherwise would.
If not -- that is, if the committee is like, say, the FCC and thus includes folks chosen by prior mayors (or who are elected ... in a hugely Democratic city), then it mitigates the critique that Rudy appointed libs to the bench.
Unfortunately, I don't know the answer (about how folks get onto the advisory committee that has such huge power in picking NYC judges). Anyone know?
Oh please! This is so stupid. First, the Mayor of NYC only appoints the judges to the NYC Family Court and Criminal Court, not the Civil Court, where the judges are elected. Second, as to those judges that the mayor does appoint, a judcial screening panel provides the mayor with a list of nominees from which to chose. Most of the members of the judical screening panel are selected by the political leaders in the various election districts in NYC. Since the vast majority of these districts are overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats, the overwhelming majority of the screening panel are also Democrats, who to no surprise, provide a list of judical nomonees to the mayor who are also overwhelmingly Democrats.
The vast, vast majority of judges that the mayor appoints to the criminal and family courts have little if any oppurtunity to make decisions that have any impact upon anyone other than the parties before the judge. They rarely decide Constitutional questions of any import, and with limited exceptions, they do not have the authority to issue injucntions or declaratory judgments. In the NYC Criminal Court, for example, the judges spend 95% or more of their time on the bench doing arraignments, and accepting guilty please in an effort to keep the wheels of justice moving. Being a Democrat or Republican at this level of justice is pretty much meaningless.
Also, on several occassions, Guilliani refused to reappoint NYC judges due to incompetence despite the recoomendations of the Judicial Screening Panel and pressure from the NYC Bar Association, the mostly Democratic political machines that try to controll NYC, and the New York Times Ediorial Board.
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