Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on the nomination of Jennifer Dorsey to be a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada.

Jennifer Dorsey has spent her entire legal career at the Las Vegas, NV firm of Kemp, Jones & Coulthard, LLP, where she has been partner for the past 9 years. She has diverse experience in civil and criminal matters, trial and appellate work, and State and Federal courts, and has tried more than a dozen trials to verdict. The committee has heard from Judge Deanell Tacha, who was nominated by President Reagan to the Tenth Circuit and is now the dean of Pepperdine University School of Law, in support of Jennifer Dorsey. She wrote:

I am well acquainted with Ms. Dorsey and can say, with full confidence, that she is an outstanding candidate for the federal judiciary who would serve with great distinction ..... She is a distinguished lawyer, a highly respected member of her community, and a true servant of the public good.

Her qualifications notwithstanding, Jennifer Dorsey has been the target of a false controversy over political donations made by her law firm colleagues. It is ironic that the same Senate Republicans who have filibustered any attempt to regulate or scrutinize political donations, and who objected to my request during the Bush administration to include political campaign contributions by nominees in the committee questionnaire, are now using donations by a nominee's colleagues to smear the nominee. These donations that the ranking member claimed he was concerned about were not even known to the nominee until they were reported in local newspapers. Ms. Dorsey has answered the ranking member's questions on this issue under oath and I consider it settled. Senate Republicans did not ask such questions of President Bush's nominees, even nominees who themselves made donations to President Bush or their home State Republican Senators after they knew that they were being considered for a judgeship. Perhaps now Senate Republicans think we should look at donations made by nominees' friends and neighbors?

This is just one more example of Senate Republicans playing games with President Obama's judicial nominees, rather than actually looking at the nominees' records. False controversies about nominees like Paul Watford, Patty Schwartz, Andrew Hurwitz, Caitlin Halligan, and Jeffrey Helmick over who they represented, or who they clerked for, demean the confirmation process.

Jennifer Dorsey is one of the 33 judicial nominees who needed to be renominated this year. Unfortunately, the Senate is not able to consider another district of Nevada nominee, Judge Elissa Cadish, whose nomination was withdrawn after the Republican Senator from Nevada refused to return his blue slip on her nomination. The concern with Judge Cadish seemed to be that in 2008 she had accurately stated existing Second Amendment jurisprudence. Judge Cadish was originally appointed to the Nevada bench by a Republican Governor, and in a 2011 judicial performance evaluation, conducted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, 88 percent of the lawyers who responded said she should be retained on the bench, which was among the highest of all judges evaluated. So I remain disappointed that her nomination was withdrawn and that the Judiciary Committee and the Senate were not permitted to consider it, especially since the vacancy to which Judge Cadish was nominated is now a judicial emergency vacancy.

In addition to the 33 renominations at the start of this year, President Obama has nominated another 28 individuals to be circuit and district judges this year, and has now had more nominees at this point in his presidency than his predecessor did at the same point. Senate Republicans are nonetheless criticizing President Obama for making too few nominations while protesting that the fact that many vacancies do not have nominees cannot possibly be the fault of Senate Republicans. These Senators are saying that they have no role in the process. Of course, only a few years ago, before President Obama had made a single judicial nomination, all Senate Republicans sent him a letter threatening to filibuster his nominees if he did not consult Republican home State Senators. They cannot have it both ways.

I take very seriously my responsibility to make recommendations when we have vacancies in Vermont, whether the President is a Democrat or a Republican, and other Senators should do the same. After all, if there are not enough judges in our home States, it is our own constituents who suffer. It should be only a matter of weeks or months, not years, for Senators to make recommendations. Republican Senators who demanded to be consulted on nominations should live up to their responsibilities, and fulfill their constitutional obligation to advise the President on nominations. They should follow the example of Democratic Senators: the administration has received recommendations for all current district vacancies in States represented by two Democratic Senators. When Senate Republicans refuse to make recommendations for nominees, and then delay votes on consensus nominees, they are not somehow hurting the President, they are hurting the American people and our justice system.

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