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Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we are about to vote on final passage to confirm President Biden's nominee to the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island, Melissa DuBose, and I would like to say a few words about her.

My senior Senator, Jack Reed, will be following me shortly, and I want to begin by saying what a pleasure and successful effort it has been to work with Senator Reed together to make recommendations to several Presidents that have produced excellent district court judges in the District Court for the District of Rhode Island, a really terrific senior judge on the First Circuit, and a sitting judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals. I think our nominees have proven themselves very well in the field after the nominations came and they were sworn in and joined the bench.

Melissa DuBose, I am confident, will join that roster of very successful Reed-Whitehouse recommendations. She has a few characteristics that I would like to mention.

One, she worked as a prosecutor in the Rhode Island Department of Attorney General, where I used to work and where I used to actually work as attorney general for a bit. She did very busy, active service there on the criminal prosecution side and was very well regarded by her peers. She spent nearly 10 years as a corporate in-house counsel at a Fortune 500 company, Schneider Electric, and learned the law from that side. Then she served on the Rhode Island district court, which is a very fast paced, busy court where your judgment is constantly called on. She has shown herself to be a very patient and well-regarded judge, having presided over maybe 250 or 300 cases that have either gone to trial or verdict.

She is a graduate of Rhode Island's own Providence College. She was a history teacher in Providence schools for 11 years before she embarked on her legal career. She was educated at the Roger Williams University School of Law, which not only graduated her but thought so highly of her that they invited her back to sit on the board of the law school. I don't know how many of my colleagues here who are lawyers have been invited to sit on the board of their law school, but the law school thought highly enough of Judge DuBose that they asked her to do that.

I would add that perhaps the most prestigious board in the State of Rhode Island is the board of the Rhode Island Foundation, a huge charitable organization devoted to the well-being and welfare of the Rhode Island community, and Rhode Island's community leaders invited her to be on the board of that as well.

This is a person, a lifelong Rhode Islander, who is exceedingly well regarded in our community.

I will close before I yield to Senator Reed by pointing out that the members of the district court could not be more excited about having her join the Rhode Island U.S. District Court.

We, as a matter of practice, very often check in with the judges to make sure they concur in the recommendations that we are going to make to a President about who is going to join them on the bench, so that if there are any problems that we are not aware of, we have a chance to do due diligence. In this case, judges on the court were affirmatively reaching out to Judge DuBose, saying: Please make sure you apply to Senator Reed and Senator Whitehouse. We really want you on the court.

This is a very special woman, a very accomplished lawyer, an experienced and proven judge, and I look forward to a strong bipartisan vote for her.

And with that, let me yield to my senior partner in this business of making excellent recommendations to Presidents for judges.

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