HLS Alum Faces Senate Filibuster

The appeals court nomination of a Law School alum left the U.S. Senate deadlocked last night, with Democrats continuing their three-day-old charge to stymy the appointment—an effort that is taking the shape of an old-fashioned filibuster.

The confirmation of Miguel A. Estrada, a Honduras-born 1986 graduate of Harvard Law School (HLS) whom President Bush nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, has developed into a partisan showdown.

So far in the Democrats’ three-day effort to block Estrada, the Senate chambers have been regaled on a wide variety of topics by a succession of Democratic senators, including a long talk from Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., on the extended courtship of his wife.

Democrats argue that Estrada is a “far-right stealth nominee” whose political beliefs cannot be fully examined because there are no public documents containing his views—so, they say, they need to see internal memos that he wrote while working for the solicitor general’s office.

But the White House says that they will not release the documents.

In a letter on Wednesday, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales wrote to senators that such documents cannot be released—and, he added, all living former solicitors general, both Democrat and Republican, have agreed with him in principle.

“That is a fundamental principle that has been followed irrespective of the party that controls the White House and the Senate,” Gonzales said.

Currently, Democrats claim that they have enough votes to keep a filibuster alive, and Republicans claim that they have enough votes to make the appointment once the Democrats yield the floor.

The D.C. Circuit is widely regarded as second only to the U.S. Supreme Court in importance, making Estrada’s nomination a weighty one.

And if Estrada makes the cut, than all of the other Republican candidates will likely get through, according to Georgetown Law School Professor David Vladeck.

“I think the Republicans took a calculated risk in trying to push Estrada’s nomination through,” Vladeck said. “If they get him through, they will get everyone else through—Judge Charles W. Pickering, Sr., John Roberts and Jeffrey Sutton.”

Former judge and HLS Beneficial Professor of Law Charles Fried, applauded Estrada’s refusal to elucidate his views, characterizing the charges of critics as “garbage.”

“It would be highly improper for him to say how he would decide cases in the hearings,” Fried said.

Estrada’s impressive academic record and career accomplishments leave no doubt as to his eligibility for the nomination.

But his unwillingness to articulate his views on contentious political issues has left some uncertainty as to his eligibility for a lifetime appointment to a federal bench as influential as the D.C. Circuit bench.

“There is no question that in terms of general credentials Estrada meets and well exceeds any reasonable qualifications, but his career has been marked by cases well outside mainstream American legal thought,” Vladeck said.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) announced its opposition to the appointment on Sept. 25, 2002.

“Mr. Estrada fails to meet the CHC’s evaluation criteria for endorsing judicial nominees,” Caucus Chair Silvestre Reynes said.

The Alliance for Justice, a private non-profit advocacy group whose mission for the last 20 years has been to uphold high standards for judicial nominees, has also expressed concern about the nomination.

Born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Estrada immigrated to the US with his family as a teenager.

He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree from Columbia in 1983.

Estrada graduated magna cum laude from HLS in 1986, where he edited the Harvard Law Review. From 1990 to 1992, he served as assistant U.S. attorney and Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of NY. In 1992, he joined the U.S. Department of Justice as an assistant to the Solicitor General.

“It would be very difficult to filibuster someone with his life story,” Vladeck said.

—Staff writer Ella A. Hoffman can be reached at hoffman@fas.harvard.edu

—Material from the Associated Press was used in the compilation of this story.