Elite Legal Special Interests Reasserting Power Over Judicial Appointments
April 21, 2009
A study documenting the bias by the American Bar Association against conservative judicial nominees – the subject of a March post on American Courthouse – is getting national attention in the wake of the Obama Administration’s decision to “restore the [ABA] to pre-eminence in federal judicial vetting.” A Wall Street Journal editorial sums up the findings of Richard Vining of the University of Georgia, Amy Steigerwalt of Georgia State University and Susan Smelcer of Emory University:
“Looking at federal appellate nominees between 1985 and 2008 across the ideological spectrum, the study found that the most liberal nominees had a 62.3% chance of receiving a ‘well-qualified’ rating from the ABA, as opposed to only a 35.5% likelihood for the most conservative nominees….Nominees in the Clinton Administration were 14% more likely to get the ABA’s highest rating than the nominees of Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.”
Like “merit” selection schemes at the state level, ABA vetting of federal judicial nominees gives elite legal special interest groups a privileged role in determining who controls America’s courts. Little wonder then, as the Journal reports, the ABA is pushing a version of “merit” selection at the federal level. Anyone want to guess which group would likely get to decide which judges have enough “merit” to be nominated to the bench?