Updated: 22 minutes ago Published: 33 minutes ago
Sen. Dan Sullivan is a lawyer, but he is also a politician. He is now demonstrating that the politician part of his personality dominates the lawyer part. This is clear from his recent attempt to change the procedures that lead up to the appointment of a federal judge.
More than six months ago, 14 applicants applied for the opening on the federal court in Alaska.
Decades ago, Sen. Ted Stevens began the practice of asking the Alaska Bar Association to conduct an advisory poll of lawyers to rate the professional qualifications and fitness of applicants to the federal bench. Senators don’t have to pick the cream of the crop — the poll just lets them know who the legal community sees as ethical, diligent, experienced and fair-minded — and who falls to the bottom of the pack. This procedure, begun by Stevens, has been followed for federal judicial appointments ever since — except now, when Sullivan has proposed a different system.
The Stevens bar poll was conducted more than six months ago. Almost 400 attorneys responded. Of the candidates known by at least one-third of the respondents, and who garnered the highest scores of well-qualified or extremely well-qualified, there were four applicants — all women. The top two are rated substantially above the others at 54% and 27%, as compared to the next-ranked candidates at 19% and 15%. Several at the bottom had 0%-10% ratings.
Sullivan is soliciting applicants to the bench as if none of this has already happened. He wants “all Alaskans” to weigh in. He selected his folks, and he now calls them a “commission” without consultation of his fellow congressional delegation members. The majority of these folks appear to have one characteristic in common: They are politicians or are involved with politics in a way that indicates they would vote for Sullivan.
Those who object to attorneys having a say in the selection of judges have claimed that “liberal lawyers” are running the show. This is a false argument. Not all lawyers are liberal, and not all lawyers rate potential judges based on politics. All the attorneys are invited to rate their fellow practitioners. Who knows them better on their professional qualifications (as opposed to their politics)?
I am a lawyer, and I have frequently rated judicial applicants. What counts for me is whether they are fair-minded and willing to do their homework. Many times, I have rated judicial applicants without knowing anything about their politics. And that’s fine, because most cases that are heard by a judge have nothing to do with politics. They involve contract interpretation, deciding who was a fault in an auto accident, or teasing out the intricacies of corporate law. In rating a judge, I am concerned about how he or she will handle these kinds of cases, because those are the vast majority of the cases that I, and most lawyers, handle. Political cases happen, but they are a small minority of what the courts do daily. That’s why I want to know if the judicial applicant is a hard worker and if he or she is fair-minded. This has nothing to do with his or her politics.
If you were entering a hospital for a life-or-death operation to be conducted by a surgeon, wouldn’t you want that surgeon to be rated highly by all the other physicians who knew him or her? Of course you would, because the doctor’s colleagues would know his or her professional competence, ethical behavior, compassion, diligence, etc. And they would certainly know that better than a group of evaluators, most of whom were chosen for their political connections.
Roger DuBrock is an attorney. He lives in Anchorage.
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