A Trump administration nominee for a federal appeals court broke down in tears during his confirmation hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee after being eviscerated in a letter from the American Bar Association.
Lawrence JC VanDyke reacted strongly to the American Bar Association’s (ABA) assessment of his fitness for office, which said that many people who had worked with him described him as “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-today practice including procedural rules.”
The ABA also voiced concerns about whether Mr VanDyke could be “fair to persons who are gay, lesbian, or otherwise part of the LGBTQ community.” The letter also noted that Mr VanDyke “would not say affirmatively that he would be fair to any litigant before him, notably members of the LGBTQ community” in the ABA’s interviews with him.
President Donald Trump has nominated more federal judges than any other president. The ABA has deemed nine of the administration’s nominees to be “unqualified”. Five of those candidates have already been confirmed by the Senate.
Though some Republican lawmakers have accused the ABA of bias against conservative nominees, the Washington Post notes that legal nonprofit has deemed 97 percent of the Trump administration’s judicial picks either “qualified” or “well qualified.”
The ABA conducts extensive confidential interviews and examines to previous writings and court rulings to evaluate candidates on integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament.
The ABA interviewed 60 people to reach its conclusion on Mr VanDyke.
When Mr Trump was inaugurated there were more than 100 federal judicial positions open. Mr Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have made a concerted effort to fill these open positions with conservative candidates, a move that experts say could radically reshape the judicial branch for a generation. All in all, Mr Trump has made 264 judicial nominations.
“If there’s a contest about the future of law, of judicial interpretations, Republicans have won,” Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown Law told PBS Newshour.
