WASHINGTON - - In a possible preview of the debate over President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick, the nominations of U.S. District Judge Andre Davis of Baltimore to the Court of Appeals and state Labor Secretary Thomas Perez to head the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department were cleared Thursday for confirmation by the full Senate.
The Senate Judiciary committee, which will hold confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor later this summer, approved Davis and Perez on bipartisan votes of 16-3 and 17-2, respectively. Final action by the full Senate has not been scheduled for either Marylander, but those familiar with the process said it would likely be sometime after July 4, at the earliest.
Senators sparred over Obama's desire to make "empathy" an important dimension in picking judges. Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont, a Democrat, tweaked Republicans by noting that President George H. W. Bush used the word "empathy" to describe Clarence Thomas when he chose him for the court in 1991.
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, senior Republican on the panel, called "empathy" a form of judicial bias. He said he was "troubled" by Obama's first batch of judicial nominees.
Republicans won't let Obama pack the federal bench "FDR-style," with judges who "have the potential, if they're activists, to promote political agendas, oftentimes agendas that can't be won at the ballot box and passed by Congress," Sessions said.
The panel's first vote on an Obama court nominee, Judge David Hamilton of Indiana, split along party lines, 12-7, with Republicans unanimously opposed. By contrast, the two Maryland nominees won the support of a majority of committee Republicans, despite strong opposition from Sessions, who voted against both.
The coming fight over Sotomayor, in which Republicans could find themselves squeezed between their conservative base and a desire to avoid further alienating Hispanics and other minority voters, might have influenced some Republican senators to favor Davis, an African-American, and Perez, whose parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic, after rejecting Hamilton, who is white.
"To the extent they are going to vote 'no' for [Sotomayor], they don't want to be seen as reflexively voting no" on minority nominees, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor.
