Senate OKs Bush Choice for Appellate Court Post

The Senate on Wednesday previewed the battles ahead for President Bush’s judicial nominees as it promoted a Pennsylvania judge to the U.S. Appeals Court despite Democratic complaints he did not deserve the job.

The 64-35 margin to confirm U.S. District Judge D. Brooks Smith was the closest judicial vote this year. Partisan fights are expected before year’s end on two other nominees, Priscilla Owen and Miguel Estrada.

Majority Democrats have opposed what they call conservative Bush nominees and they are saving for last the most contentious picks for the bench.

“There’s hardly a moderate among them, particularly at the appellate court level,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). “The nominees are committed to an ideological agenda which turns the clock back to maybe the 1930s, maybe the 1890s.”

Thirty-four Democrats along with one independent, Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont, lined up against Smith’s nomination for the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Fifteen Democrats sided with the GOP.

The GOP called the criticism against the nominees unwarranted.

“If this is the kind of thing that members of the body use as an excuse for thwarting the president’s judicial nominations, then the American people will have a big laugh at our expense, and rightly so,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Also Wednesday, the committee delayed until after the Senate’s August recess a final decision on Owen, a Texas Supreme Court justice nominated to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The committee has not scheduled a hearing for Estrada, selected for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), has promised one before year’s end.

The committee earlier this year refused to let U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering of Mississippi--also nominated to the 5th Circuit--get a Senate vote after criticism from women’s, civil rights and liberal groups.

The rest of Bush’s appeals court nominations that have advanced from the committee have won easy approval. The Senate has approved 64 district and appeals court nominees so far.

Smith, who was made a federal judge in 1988, will work out of the Philadelphia-based appeals court covering Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the U.S. Virgin Islands.