Some Republicans may have problems with Mukasey. As news of his possible nomination emerged over the weekend, conservatives were targeting opinions that they considered troubling, including a 1994 ruling in which he denied political asylum in the United States to a Chinese family that said it was facing persecution for defying China's forced-abortion policies.
Mukasey was nominated to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan by President Reagan in 1987. He served on the bench for 18 years and was chief judge of the court from 2000 to 2006.
In 1996, he presided over the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted of being the mastermind of a plot to bomb the United Nations and other New York landmarks. He sentenced Abdel Rahman to life in prison without parole.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, Mukasey ruled that Jose Padilla, once held as an "enemy combatant" for allegedly plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the U.S., had a right to a lawyer.
He also presided over a lawsuit between New York developer Larry Silverstein and several insurance companies arising from the World Trade Center collapse.
Mukasey has expressed concerns about the ability of the federal courts to handle terrorism prosecutions, however.
Last month, after a federal jury in Miami convicted Padilla of terrorism charges, Mukasey said the public should take cold comfort from such prosecutions.
In an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal, he wrote: "This case shows why current institutions and statutes are not well-suited to even the limited tasks of supplementing what became, after Sept. 11, 2001, principally a military effort to combat Islamic terrorism."
Instead, he suggested, Congress should consider setting up new institutions to handle terrorism cases.
He cited as one possible alternative a proposal to establish a separate national security court staffed by life-tenured federal judges.
Born in New York City, Mukasey was educated at Columbia College and Yale Law School. After serving as an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan from 1972 to 1976, he went into private practice for 12 years before Reagan made him a judge. He rejoined his old firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler last year.
His son, Marc, is also a former assistant U.S. attorney and also has a Giuliani connection: He is head of the white-collar criminal defense practice in the New York office of Bracewell & Giuliani, the law firm that the former New York mayor joined two years ago.
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rick.schmitt@latimes.com
