Drive Seeks to Block Clinton Judicial Nominees

Four Republican U.S. senators, former Atty. Gen. Ed Meese and former appeals court Judge Robert Bork are playing key roles in a new $1.4-million fund-raising campaign in support of an arch-conservative organization seeking to block the appointment of what it calls “activist liberal judges.”

The group endorses the work of the Washington-based Judicial Selection Monitoring Project in a 15-minute videotape that has been sent to potential contributors. The project has taken a prominent part in trying to block several nominees of President Clinton.

The videotape repeatedly warns viewers that by the end of Clinton’s presidency, he will have appointed more than half of the nation’s federal judges. These judges, the tape contends, could do great damage to the nation and subject citizens to what Meese calls “judicial tyranny.”

In addition to endorsing the project, Bork signed a fund-raising letter that accompanies the video and some explanatory materials.

The videotape cites several examples of alleged judicial excess. It spotlights an April 1997 decision by U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell in Philadelphia, ordering the release of a woman convicted of murder in 1992.

Featured are Hazel and John Snow, the parents of murder victim Laurie Snow, and Dalzell’s picture is flashed on the screen twice.

Nowhere on the tape are the judge’s detailed reasons for releasing the woman, including his conclusions that another man committed the murder and that there were 25 instances of police and prosecutorial misconduct.

Nor does the video tell viewers that Dalzell was appointed by President George Bush in 1991.

Although the thrust of the video is that the threat is from Clinton appointees, it does not state that the other three opinions mentioned, including one involving California’s anti-affirmative action Proposition 209, were not the work of Clinton judges either.

Senators appearing on the tape are Phil Gramm of Texas, James Imhofe of Oklahoma, Robert Smith of New Hampshire and Jefferson Sessions of Alabama, whose nomination to be a federal judge in 1986 was killed by the Senate Judiciary Committee after civil rights groups opposed him.

Sessions was subsequently elected to the Senate and is now a member of the Judiciary Committee.

In its fund-raising solicitation, the monitoring project offers donors giving $10,000 the opportunity to attend “intimate dinners” with “leading conservative elected and public figures closely involved with the judicial confirmation process.”

If donors can give $1,000, they will receive an autographed copy of the 1996 book “Slouching Toward Gomorrah,” a truculent attack on modern liberalism by Bork, whose nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate in 1987.

A $5,000 contributor would receive the Bork book plus a personally inscribed gavel.

In addition to the other forms of recognition, well-heeled donors who give $25,000 will get “on-air credits” during the monitoring project’s television show “Legal Notebook,” and a forthcoming TV series on judicial activism.

The campaign’s goal is to raise $1.4 million for research, advertising and coalition-building, according to the letter signed by Bork, whose bid to become a Supreme Court justice was blocked after one of the most bruising confirmation battles in history.

It could not be determined how much money has been raised so far.

The fund-raising material includes a page titled “Outrageous Decisions From Clinton Judges,” and cites five examples from federal appeals courts judges around the country.

A review of those rulings reveals that in each instance the judge’s opinion was a dissent from the majority decision.

In one of the five cases, a Clinton appointee was on the prevailing side of a 2-1 decision that the project favored.

In another case, involving a civil rights suit filed against a police officer, the fund-raising material states that four Clinton appointees “unilaterally” overthrew “a well-established precedent limiting” the scope of such cases.

In fact, the four judges were among seven dissenters--including a Bush appointee--on the 18-judge panel. More important, no precedent was overturned.

The Sept. 9 fund-raising letter signed by Bork states that “over the past 4 1/2 years, the more than 200 Clinton judicial appointments have been drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of the liberal elite. These judges blazed an activist trail, creating an out-of-control judiciary.”

The letter highlights a huge gulf between the way liberals and conservatives view Clinton’s nominees. The president’s liberal critics have said he has leaned toward centrist nominees and has not moved fast enough in making nominations, contributing to a growing number of vacant judgeships.

During Clinton’s first term, all but four of the president’s nominees who made it to a vote before the full Senate were confirmed on voice votes. The four who faced roll call votes also were confirmed.

However, a number of other nominees have been stalled for some time, including two women lawyers from Los Angeles whom Clinton tapped for federal trial judgeships, as well as a sitting federal trial judge and a UC Berkeley law professor tapped by the president for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Bork declined comment on the campaign, as did Paul M. Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation, the parent group of the monitoring project.

A spokesman for Thomas L. Jipping, director of the monitoring project, said he was out of the country and unavailable for comment. Meese and two of the senators did not return calls.

Gramm’s press secretary, Larry Neal, said he was not familiar with the video or the fund-raising appeal.

Gary Hoitsma, a spokesman for Imhofe, said the senator agreed with the project’s philosophy on judges and had taped a segment for the group. However, he said Imhofe had not been asked to attend any dinners with donors and was unaware of the contents of the video other than what he said on it.

The fund-raising solicitations do not make clear which conservative elected and public figures would attend the dinners.

Michael Josephson, president of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina del Rey, said he thought the campaign “takes the precedent set in Bork’s confirmation fight . . . to a whole new level” of partisanship.

“Republicans are rightly criticizing Democrats for selling the White House,” Josephson said, “but here they’re doing the same thing.”

Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor and an expert in legal ethics, said he was not troubled by the campaign.

“Bork and Weyrich are aiming broadly to achieve their political purpose,” Gillers said. “They’re allowed to do this.”

Referring to the Snow murder case, he said “it would be inaccurate to blow this up as an example of judicial excess, but it’s easy to do. This effort is not governed by the Federal Trade Commission. If consumer protection applied, Weyrich would be in trouble, but the 1st Amendment includes the right to exaggerate and to conceal.”

Two Democratic senators who have expressed concern about Republican efforts to stall or block Clinton nominees said they were outraged by the fund-raising campaign.

“This extremist diatribe has been red meat for some elements of the Republican base, and now they apparently see this as a pot of gold,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

“This explains why Republicans are holding up mainstream men and women who have bipartisan support,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer of California.

Boxer has been attempting to get a roll call vote on the confirmation of Margaret Morrow, a Los Angeles lawyer who was the first female president of the California Bar Assn.

Clinton nominated Morrow for a federal trial judgeship in Los Angeles in 1995 and the nomination was twice voted out of the Judiciary Committee. But it has been vigorously opposed by the monitoring project and held up by Republicans in the Senate, although Mokrrow has bipartisan support.

A Texas attorney whose nomination for a federal judgeship in Fort Worth has been stalled more than two years has spoken out against the solicitation. Michael D. Schattman, who was a state court judge for 18 years, said in an interview the tape was given to him in early October by a Republican friend who said he was concerned about its misleading tone.

Schattman said he has sent the tape to 40 other nominees in an attempt to get them to speak out “about the depth of the misinformation campaign being waged across the country against all of us.”

He lambasted the quality of the research embodied in the fund-raising materials and said it was particularly misleading that the videotape did not inform viewers that Dalzell was a Bush appointee.

Schattman, who was a classmate of Clinton at Georgetown University, was nominated by the president to the federal bench in December 1995. His nomination has been pending since then.

The state’s two Republican senators, Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, initially gave his bid a favorable nod. But they reversed field over the summer and Schattman’s prospects for confirmation are now considered bleak.

In a letter to other judicial nominees, Schattman said, “I know you are nervous about doing anything to upset your chances. . . . But history shows that nominees, for example, Clarence Thomas [who narrowly was confirmed by the Senate as a Supreme Court justice in 1991 after a drawn-out battle], who fight in their own defense fare better than those who feel they shouldn’t have to fight.”

Nonetheless, some other nominees interviewed by The Times said they fear that commenting on the monitoring project’s campaign would further harm their chances at confirmation.