Could Jane Kelly be the sacrificial lamb?:
The White House is vetting Jane L. Kelly, a career public defender turned federal appellate judge, as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court, as President Obama closes in on a decision that could reshape the court for decades and create an election-year showdown with Republicans.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been conducting background interviews on Judge Kelly, 51, according to a person with knowledge of the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is closely guarding details about Mr. Obama’s search to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
The White House declined to comment, and Judge Kelly said through a judicial assistant in her Cedar Rapids, Iowa, chambers that she was not granting interviews on the matter.
Judge Kelly won quick and unanimous confirmation by the Senate three years ago to her current post on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Her nomination could intensify pressure on Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to break with his party and hold hearings on Mr. Obama’s Supreme Court candidate.
Graphic
Supreme Court Nominees Considered in Election Years Are Usually Confirmed
Since 1900, the Senate has voted on eight Supreme Court nominees during an election year. Six were confirmed.
OPEN Graphic
In a Senate floor speech in 2013, Mr. Grassley effusively praised Judge Kelly, who has spent her career in Iowa and is well regarded in legal circles there. He quoted from a letter from retired Judge David R. Hansen, a Republican appointee, who called her a “forthright woman of high integrity and honest character” and a person of “exceptionally keen intellect” before voting to confirm her for the appeals court post.
“I congratulate Ms. Kelly on her accomplishments and wish her well in her duties,” Mr. Grassley said at the time. “I am pleased to support her confirmation and urge my colleagues to join me.”
Mr. Grassley and Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, have said that they do not plan to grant Mr. Obama’s nominee even a courtesy call in their Capitol Hill offices and that they have no intention of holding hearings on his Supreme Court pick, arguing that the task of filling the vacancy on the nation’s highest court should be left to the next president.
“This is something the American people should decide,” Mr. McConnell said on Wednesday. “President Obama still has every right to nominate someone on his way out the door. The Senate also has every right to withhold its consent.”
Democrats have said privately that they believe selecting Judge Kelly might force Mr. Grassley to change his stance and hold hearings after all, out of a sense of obligation to a prominent jurist from his home state and concern about tarnishing his reputation in Iowa months before he faces re-election.
In the days after Justice Scalia’s death, Judge Kelly’s name as a possible successor surfaced early among those regarded by people close to the White House and seasoned observers of the process. Mr. Obama has been poring through a thick binder of information on potential candidates, the White House has said, but officials have refused to identify the names inside.
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As of Wednesday, the president and his team have reached out to all 100 senators about filling the vacancy, the White House said.
Mr. Obama is likely to make his selection in the next two weeks, a timetable that would be consistent with the four to five weeks he spent deliberating before filling his previous two Supreme Court vacancies, in the cases of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. It has been three weeks since Justice Scalia unexpectedly died.
Continue reading the main story
Interactive Graphic: Supreme Court Precedents That May Be at Risk
White House allies said several other federal appellate judges are also plausible candidates, including Srikanth Srinivasan, who would be the first Indian-American on the Supreme Court; Adalberto J. Jordan, born in Cuba, who would be its second Hispanic; Patricia Millett; Jacqueline Nguyen; and Merrick B. Garland, the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, who has been considered by Mr. Obama before.
If selected and confirmed, Judge Kelly would be the only public defender to serve on the high court, bringing the perspective of a criminal defense attorney to a bench dominated by academics, prosecutors and other government lawyers.
She is an Indiana native. She graduated in 1987 from Duke University, won a Fulbright Scholarship to study in New Zealand, and attended Harvard Law School, where she was a classmate of Mr. Obama’s.
She clerked for Donald J. Porter, a United States District judge in South Dakota, and later for Judge Hansen, before spending a year teaching at the University of Illinois College of Law and then joining the federal public defender’s office for the Northern District of Iowa.
Five years into her tenure there, she was nearly killed in a brutal attack while jogging on a popular trail in a Cedar Rapids park. Discovered by passers-by lying facedown in a pool of blood, she spent several months recovering and endured multiple surgeries.
The crime was never solved, although there was speculation it might have been connected to her work. Still, Judge Kelly later told The Des Moines Register that she had no doubt about returning to her job as a criminal defense lawyer, which she did immediately after recovering from the assault.
“It’s easy to lose compassion,” she said then, “but the problem is bigger than who committed the crime.”
Judge Kelly has joked that she cannot remember a time when she did not know how to make methamphetamine and that she has spent enough time in prison to serve out sentences for several misdemeanors. The experience, she told the Senate in 2013, has given her a special appreciation for the role of the justice system.
“As a criminal defense attorney, I am often representing someone who, shall I say, is not the most popular person in the room,” she told the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee as they were considering her nomination to the appeals court. “So I, as much as anyone, know how important it is to be fair and impartial and make decisions on things other than bias, favor or prejudice.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/u...column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
The White House is vetting Jane L. Kelly, a career public defender turned federal appellate judge, as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court, as President Obama closes in on a decision that could reshape the court for decades and create an election-year showdown with Republicans.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been conducting background interviews on Judge Kelly, 51, according to a person with knowledge of the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is closely guarding details about Mr. Obama’s search to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
The White House declined to comment, and Judge Kelly said through a judicial assistant in her Cedar Rapids, Iowa, chambers that she was not granting interviews on the matter.
Judge Kelly won quick and unanimous confirmation by the Senate three years ago to her current post on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Her nomination could intensify pressure on Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to break with his party and hold hearings on Mr. Obama’s Supreme Court candidate.
Graphic
Supreme Court Nominees Considered in Election Years Are Usually Confirmed
Since 1900, the Senate has voted on eight Supreme Court nominees during an election year. Six were confirmed.
OPEN Graphic
In a Senate floor speech in 2013, Mr. Grassley effusively praised Judge Kelly, who has spent her career in Iowa and is well regarded in legal circles there. He quoted from a letter from retired Judge David R. Hansen, a Republican appointee, who called her a “forthright woman of high integrity and honest character” and a person of “exceptionally keen intellect” before voting to confirm her for the appeals court post.
“I congratulate Ms. Kelly on her accomplishments and wish her well in her duties,” Mr. Grassley said at the time. “I am pleased to support her confirmation and urge my colleagues to join me.”
Mr. Grassley and Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, have said that they do not plan to grant Mr. Obama’s nominee even a courtesy call in their Capitol Hill offices and that they have no intention of holding hearings on his Supreme Court pick, arguing that the task of filling the vacancy on the nation’s highest court should be left to the next president.
“This is something the American people should decide,” Mr. McConnell said on Wednesday. “President Obama still has every right to nominate someone on his way out the door. The Senate also has every right to withhold its consent.”
Democrats have said privately that they believe selecting Judge Kelly might force Mr. Grassley to change his stance and hold hearings after all, out of a sense of obligation to a prominent jurist from his home state and concern about tarnishing his reputation in Iowa months before he faces re-election.
In the days after Justice Scalia’s death, Judge Kelly’s name as a possible successor surfaced early among those regarded by people close to the White House and seasoned observers of the process. Mr. Obama has been poring through a thick binder of information on potential candidates, the White House has said, but officials have refused to identify the names inside.
y
As of Wednesday, the president and his team have reached out to all 100 senators about filling the vacancy, the White House said.
Mr. Obama is likely to make his selection in the next two weeks, a timetable that would be consistent with the four to five weeks he spent deliberating before filling his previous two Supreme Court vacancies, in the cases of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. It has been three weeks since Justice Scalia unexpectedly died.
Continue reading the main story
Interactive Graphic: Supreme Court Precedents That May Be at Risk
White House allies said several other federal appellate judges are also plausible candidates, including Srikanth Srinivasan, who would be the first Indian-American on the Supreme Court; Adalberto J. Jordan, born in Cuba, who would be its second Hispanic; Patricia Millett; Jacqueline Nguyen; and Merrick B. Garland, the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, who has been considered by Mr. Obama before.
If selected and confirmed, Judge Kelly would be the only public defender to serve on the high court, bringing the perspective of a criminal defense attorney to a bench dominated by academics, prosecutors and other government lawyers.
She is an Indiana native. She graduated in 1987 from Duke University, won a Fulbright Scholarship to study in New Zealand, and attended Harvard Law School, where she was a classmate of Mr. Obama’s.
She clerked for Donald J. Porter, a United States District judge in South Dakota, and later for Judge Hansen, before spending a year teaching at the University of Illinois College of Law and then joining the federal public defender’s office for the Northern District of Iowa.
Five years into her tenure there, she was nearly killed in a brutal attack while jogging on a popular trail in a Cedar Rapids park. Discovered by passers-by lying facedown in a pool of blood, she spent several months recovering and endured multiple surgeries.
The crime was never solved, although there was speculation it might have been connected to her work. Still, Judge Kelly later told The Des Moines Register that she had no doubt about returning to her job as a criminal defense lawyer, which she did immediately after recovering from the assault.
“It’s easy to lose compassion,” she said then, “but the problem is bigger than who committed the crime.”
Judge Kelly has joked that she cannot remember a time when she did not know how to make methamphetamine and that she has spent enough time in prison to serve out sentences for several misdemeanors. The experience, she told the Senate in 2013, has given her a special appreciation for the role of the justice system.
“As a criminal defense attorney, I am often representing someone who, shall I say, is not the most popular person in the room,” she told the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee as they were considering her nomination to the appeals court. “So I, as much as anyone, know how important it is to be fair and impartial and make decisions on things other than bias, favor or prejudice.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/u...column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
