Senate Set To Confirm More Judges

The GOP-controlled Senate was poised Tuesday to move Janice Rogers Brown's federal appellate court nomination past a Democratic filibuster despite minority party complaints that she shouldn't get a lifetime judgeship.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he expected not only to get the embattled California jurist confirmed for the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia before Thursday, but that he also sees the Senate approving William Pryor for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta before Friday.

"I'm pleased with the way we're coming into this session," said Frist, R-Tenn., in his first news conference following a Memorial Day recess.

If the Senate confirms Brown and Pryor before the weekend, they will have accommodated all three controversial nominees singled out in a deal cut by centrists of both parties to avoid a fight over the judicial filibuster. "It will set the stage for up-or-down votes for future judges," Frist said.

Republicans say Brown is worthy of confirmation to a court that many call the second most important in the nation, one also viewed as a stepping stone to the Supreme Court.

Brown is "one of the best nominations the president has made. She is a woman of integrity and ability," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

But Democratic leaders were still trying to scuttle her nomination.

"Janice Rogers Brown is one of President Bush's most ideological and extreme judicial nominees," said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's no. 2 Democrat. Added Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee: "Judge Brown was the least worthy pick this president has made for the appellate court, and that's based on her record."

Democrats have been blocking Brown's nomination since November 2003, when Republican failed on a 53-43 vote to get the 60 votes needed to bypass a Democratic filibuster.

But to avert a partisan showdown, seven Democrats and seven Republicans signed a pact last month pledging not to filibuster judicial nominees except in "extraordinary" circumstances. At the same time, they agreed to oppose attempts by GOP leaders to change filibuster procedures.

As part of that agreement, Democrats also agreed not to filibuster Brown, Pryor and Priscilla Owen.

The Senate already has confirmed Judge Owen, a longtime member of the Texas Supreme Court who was sworn in Monday as a judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

The confirmation of Pryor, a former Alabama attorney general, will come up after Brown's approval process is completed, Frist said.

Liberal activists are still fighting to get their senators — and maybe some Republicans — to scuttle Brown's nomination.

They have portrayed her as a conservative judicial activist who ignores the law in favor of her own political views. They are critical of her record as a jurist who supported limits on abortion rights and corporate liability and opposed affirmative action.

"Her undisguised hostility to other long settled civil rights law as well as to administrative law makes her particularly unsuitable for the D.C. Circuit, which has exclusive or influential jurisdiction over many administrative agency matters critical to the advancement of blacks and Hispanics," said Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., head of the Congressional Black Caucus.

But Brown's supporters say critics are more concerned about stopping a conservative black woman from getting a seat of power inside the federal judiciary. If confirmed, Brown would become the only second black woman on the D.C. Circuit court, which decides important government cases involving separation of powers and the authority of federal agencies.

"The discrimination by left-wing Democrats of highly qualified conservative women to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals must stop," said Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America.