WASHINGTON — President Bush moved to tip the lower courts back toward the right Wednesday, naming several of the conservative legal movement's brightest young stars to seats on the U.S. courts of appeal.
In all, the president announced 11 nominees to the regional U.S. courts of appeal, including two Democrats. As a group, the first round of judicial candidates from the Bush White House appears to reflect both a commitment to conservative philosophy and a concession to political reality.
They include a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who has won three "states' rights" victories in the high court, a Utah law professor who advocates a greater role for religion in public life and a politically conservative Latino who has clerked at the high court.
Conspicuously absent from the first batch of nominees were two Californians: Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who had been slated as nominees to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Also missing was conservative Washington lawyer Peter Keisler, who was the initial pick as a Maryland judge on the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The three were sidetracked, at least temporarily, by opposition from Senate Democrats who represent their states.
Bush gathered the slightly pared-down group in the East Room of the White House and praised them as prospective judges of "the highest caliber."
"They come from diverse backgrounds [and] all have sterling credentials," he said. "I submit their names to the Senate with full confidence that they will satisfy any test of judicial merit."
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sounding mollified, said they were backing away from a plan to block all the pending Bush nominees.
"We're going to examine them carefully," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), "but the idea of holding back everybody isn't necessary any longer."
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the committee's ranking Democrat, said his party will insist on "a balanced judiciary. We're not trying to appoint judges, but we also feel that 'advise and consent' does not mean appoint and rubber-stamp."
Overall, the lower federal courts are closely split on ideological grounds. Slightly more than half of the 756 active judges are Democratic appointees, most of whom were appointed by President Clinton. The others are Republicans who were named during the 12 years that Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush were in the White House.
