A different path
There’s this fella interviewing for an exciting new job as a Federal District Court judge in the District of Columbia, who turned out to know not very much about the judging.
Matthew S. Petersen, a member of the Federal Election Commission, was one of five of President Trump’s judicial nominees being questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday when Senator John N. Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, singled him out for an interrogation.
Thus commenced what appeared to be an excruciating five minutes of ignorance on Mr. Petersen’s part, as he answered most of Senator Kennedy’s questions in the negative.
No, he had not ever handled a jury trial, or even a bench trial. In fact, he had not handled any civil or criminal trials at all, in either state or federal court.
No, he had never argued a motion in state court.
No, he could not define the Daubert standard, a well-known standard (among lawyers, anyway) for admitting expert testimony. Nor could he explain a motion in limine, a formal request to exclude certain kinds of evidence.
Mr. Petersen, who practiced election law at a firm before joining the government, and who has been nominated to the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, attempted to justify his inability to answer the questions. “I understand that the path that many successful district court judges have taken has been a different one than I’ve taken,” he said.
Ah yes, a different path; let a thousand flowers bloom, march to the beat of a different drummer, be a little bit quirky and unusual.
MUST WATCH: Republican @SenJohnKennedy asks one of @realDonaldTrump’s US District Judge nominees basic questions of law & he can’t answer a single one. Hoo-boy. pic.twitter.com/fphQx2o1rc
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) December 15, 2017
Yeah, that’s…. not good. I mean, I would have fumbled the difference between Pullman and Younger abstention, but (1) I was just reading Twitter on a Thursday night, not at my (entirely hypothetical!) confirmation hearing; and (2) the other questions are pretty basic stuff. (Although “when did you last read the Federal Rules of Evidence” is a bit imprecise. I doubt any litigators just sit down on a Sunday afternoon and read the FRE cover to cover for shits and giggles — you remember a lot of it, and look up particular details when you need to.)
Petersen isn’t necessarily a dumb guy or a bad lawyer. But he’s spent most of his career as an FEC Commissioner, and apparently hasn’t made any efforts to bone up on basic litigation skills either before or after his nomination. Appointing him to a district court position is like asking your podiatrist to perform heart transplant surgery — he just doesn’t have the right set of skills, and while he might be able to learn them on the job, a lot of people will get hurt while he does.
Oh, and I’ve seen some right-wing talking points about how some Obama nominees like Elena Kagan didn’t have significant trial experience. But she was a Supreme Court nominee. It’s nice if an appellate judge has trial experience, because she’ll have some practical insights, but it’s not crucial that every appellate judge have such experience. But in a trial court judge — which is what District Court judges are — trial experience is pretty huge.
I’m kind of surprised by this. The Federalist Society has been working for decades to put together lists of potential judges who are (1) rock-solid right-wing ideologues; but (2) have all the standard educational and professional credentials. Not sure what happened here.
Trump happened here. Trump and his contempt for people who are trained for the jobs he is appointing them to…the total mindset of Trump is (1) are they loyal; and (2) are they totally unprepared for the job. They meet those two qualifications, and it’s a shoo in.
I think he (and a number of other Republicans who are willing to go along for a ride in the Trump limo, even as it careens over cliff after cliff after cliff) actually does believe that people who lack the requisite education or experience are going to be better at the job…because they are outsiders, not part of the Washington scene. And that is exactly what his followers want.
As for Kagan, there were many on the left who also spoke up and worried about her lack of experience.
iknklast,
I suppose. I just had been under the impression that Trump didn’t give a shit about judges either way (especially non-SCOTUS positions), that he had delegated those decisions to Pence and the FedSoc and would just rubberstamp whoever they put in front of him.
But who knows. Maybe Petersen called in some favors and got himself put on a list he shouldn’t have been on. Or maybe he had some appeal to Trump for some reason.
Oh, and another possibility I left out: maybe Trump has been filling so many judgeships (thanks to the GOP obstrucing Obama’s last years) that the conservative bench has gotten really shallow. That Talley guy who just withdrew was pretty dismal, too.
And Petersen has withdrawn. A rare bit of good news. Some Republicans still have a sense of shame.
Jeez, just because he had no idea what he was doing there. Some people are so fussy.