A Thorough Vetting

• Author: Lee Rawles
• Pages: 66-68

66 || ABA JOURNAL JANUARY 2018

Your ABA

SHUTTERSTOCK

Your ABA

A Thorough Vetting

Its rating system under fire, the ABA stresses importance of federal judicial

candidate evaluations

By Lee Rawles

Amid criticism from Republican

senators and a lack of cooperation

from the Trump administration, the

ABA is standing by the judicial nomi-

nee ratings produced by its Standing

Committee on the Federal Judiciary.

“The American Bar Association

has been impartially evaluating fed-

eral judicial nominees since 1953,”

says ABA President Hilarie Bass.

“During those 64 years—through

both Republican and Democratic

administrations—the ABA’s Standing

Committee on the Federal Judiciary

has thoroughly vetted thousands of

nominees using a fair and nonparti-

san process that no other organiza-

tion can match.”

The committee’s work came under

fire after some of President Donald

Trump’s judicial nominees were

rated “not qualified,” with Republican

members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary

Committee criticizing the ratings.

During a nomination hearing for

Leonard Steven Grasz, who received a

unanimous not-qualified rating for a

position on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court

of Appeals at St. Louis, Sen. Orrin

Hatch of Utah called the committee’s

decision “ridiculous” and “political.”

But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse,

D-R.I., pushed back, pointing out

that the vast majority of evaluations

of Trump’s nominees had resulted in

“well qualified” or “qualified” ratings.

As of December, 59 evaluations had

been completed, 51 of which received

one of those two ratings.

“So I think it would be hard for the

committee to ascribe the outcome in

this case to a general partisanship of

the ABA process,” Whitehouse says.

“It would not be consistent with the

facts.”

The current criticism is also not

consistent with past praise of the

committee’s work. For example,

Judiciary Committee Chairman

Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told Nancy

Scott Degan, who then chaired the

committee, “I would like to compli-

ment anybody who serves on eval-

uating these judges at all levels”

when she was testifying about the

well-qualified rating Neil Gorsuch

received for his nomination to the

U.S. Supreme Court.

So just how does the committee

operate, and what are its ratings

based on?

JUDICIAL STANDARDS

Since President Dwight D.

Eisenhower first requested the

ABA’s participation in 1953, the

committee has assessed judicial can-

didates on three metrics: professional

competence, integrity and judicial

temperament. In an in-depth back-

grounder on the committee’s policies,

the three standards are explained:

When the committee evaluates

“integrity,” it considers the nominee’s

character and general reputation in

the legal community, as well as the

nominee’s industry and diligence.

“Professional competence” encom-

passes such qualities as intellectual

capacity, judgment, writing and

analytical abilities, knowledge of

the law and breadth of professional

experience.

In evaluating “judicial tempera-

ment,” the committee considers the

nominee’s compassion, decisiveness,

open-mindedness, courtesy, patience,

freedom from bias and commitment

to equal justice under the law.

The evaluation is nonpartisan;

no candidate is assessed for their

“philosophy, political aliation or

ideology.” The committee also never

suggests or recommends judicial

candidates. The committee has

only three ratings: well qualified,

qualified and not qualified.

However, not all presidential

administrations have welcomed

the ABA committee’s ratings. Since

the Eisenhower administration, the

norm was for the committee to com-

plete its evaluation before the o-

cial nomination. The exception to

this was during President George

W. Bush’s tenure, when he chose

to announce his judicial nominees