A pleasant surprise appeared in the Tulsa World, daily newspaper, on December 21.  Somewhat buried on page A-6 was an AP story credited to Matthew

Daly headlined, “Senate approves 13 judge nominees.” Well it’s about time some recognition in reporting be given to the Senate Judiciary Committee for actually doing the assigned duties, which are processing judicial appointments made by the president.

The story stated that the “Senators had confirmed a batch of 13 ‘conservative’ judicial nominees, bringing to 102 the number approved this year – more than twice the annual average over the past three decades.”

A radio talk show a few days later raised the number to 105, if memory is accurate.  It should be remembered that one of the PRESDT-45 promises in campaigning was to nominate more constitutionally oriented judges to the federal courts, a promise he has solidly, and it seems eagerly, kept.

It continues to state that in 2019, numbers included 20 to the Courts of Appeals and bringing the total to those – in my opinion, rather notorious in past decades for being “activist” oriented – courts to 50 in the three years he has been in office.  He has often ranted about the bias of the Ninth Circuit of Appeals Court, sitting in San Francisco.

 In every case, the appointments have been to fill a vacant seat, telling me that his predecessors were not doing their jobs in making appointments, or the Senate was not moving to approve appointments that were being made.  In some cases, that might have been proper since the candidate may have had the wrong, in the Senate point of view, constitutional persuasion.

Just a little background here, from my memory.  During the administration of PRESJC-39, D-Georgia, a cry arose from those using the Federal Court System, at all levels, that the court dockets were overcrowded and Congress passed for him a law which doubled the number of judicial seats and allowed him to appoint that number as well as nominations for vacancies that existed or came open. Thus he was responsible for well over half of the resulting number of judges.  Every one appointed during his term of office, from January, 77 to January, 80,  were of the more “activist”-type, giving the us situation we have been in since.

Of course, the Supreme Court was not affected.  The Constitution provides for establishing the Supreme Court and authorizes Congress to establish such lower courts as seem to be needed.  In any event, since all these federal judges are appointed for life, it will be a number of decades before there will be a reversal of what he is now on the way to accomplishing, to our benefit.

Credit should also be given to the Judiciary Committee of the Senate which has not been historically prompt in evaluating his nominations and passing judgement on them to be appointed. 

In my memory is a nomination of one of my closest friends, William H. Erickson of Denver, to the Supreme Court, I believe in the late 1970’s.

He was extremely well qualified, but when he was seated for his hearing before the committee, the first thing out of the mouth of the then-chairman, Sen. Paul Simon, D-Illinois, was, as reported to me, “Mr. Erickson I’m here to tell you that unless you resign your membership in Cherry Hills Country Club, you won’t even get a hearing in this committee.” 

According to Bill, he replied, “Mr. Chairman, in that case you can shove the nomination in your ear” and walked out of the room. It was my understanding with the media cameras were still rolling.  Bill later became Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court.

This has stuck in my mind since because of the irony and displayed bias and ignorance of Senator Simon, who was of the Jewish faith but did not know that not one Jew had ever applied to Cherry Hills because they had an older and equally beautiful country club with no Gentile members.

 I had a couple of chances to play their golf course in professional association golf tournaments and can attest to the ambiance there, but have never been on the Cherry Hills course.

In any event it was surprising to me to see the article in the World but thank them for at least carrying it since the record of achievement has not been seen elsewhere.