Fairly appropriate choice for judge, given the contempt that the Davis regime had towards the idea of an independent judiciary.
Contempt? That's a funny word considering that all those years Davis was fighting Congress trying to get them to establish a supreme court!
But as you well know, the states-righters in the Senate didn't think that was such a wise idea. They knew that a supreme court would be used to consolidate federal power at the expense of the states just like it did under Marshall in the U.S. system. They therefore sat on the bill to create a federal supreme court, which made all the cases that arose go to the state supreme courts.