Word: benching
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Political patronage has been the traditional way to fill the federal bench. Presidents appoint federal judges, but since Senators can blackball any candidate from their home state, they have the real power of appointment. Sheer embarrassment is about the only check. When Senator Ted Kennedy tried to nominate Family Retainer Francis X. Morrissey for a federal judgeship in 1965, other lawyers began joking that Morrissey was boning up for the job by reading the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the rough equivalent of preparing for surgery by looking at Gray's Anatomy. Kennedy eventually withdrew Morrissey's name...
...about the process is that it has worked relatively well. Says Mollenhoff: "Most observers agree that 90% of the nominees have gone on to become excellent federal judges. But another way of putting it is that 70 out of 700 federal judges should not have been put on the bench. That is way too many...
...managed to make Senators use "merit" selection committees in 24 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, but some flatly refused. Maryland's Senator Paul Sarbanes selected his former law partner; another, North Carolina's Robert Morgan, nominated his campaign manager. Carter has also diversified the bench to make sure the judges' backgrounds and attitudes more closely reflect the population's. When he took office, only 1% were female and only 5% were black or Hispanic. So far, a third of his appointments are women or members of a minority group, or both, like Amalya Kearse, 42, a black...
Something is seriously wrong if the federal bench cannot attract and hold the very best. So much is expected of it. The judiciary is supposed to be democracy's hedge on majority rule and executive highhandedness. "There is no character on earth more elevated and pure than that of a learned and upright judge. He exerts an influence like the dews of heaven falling without observation," said Daniel Webster, no doubt casting his eyes heavenward. Definitions of a good judge read like recommendations for sainthood: compassionate yet firm, at once patient and decisive, all wise and upstanding...
...fears that they "dilute the moral force" of the bench, and he adds, "There are other judicial tasks, perhaps of equal importance, that are shunted aside...