Senate confirms Owen, ending four-year battle

05/25/2005

WASHINGTON (USA Today) — The Senate has voted to confirm the nomination of Priscilla Owen as a federal judge, ending a four-year effort by Democrats to derail one of President Bush’s prime judicial nominees.

The chamber voted 56-43 Thursday afternoon to confirm the nomination, meaning the current Texas Supreme Court justice will serve on the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The vote came a day after the Senate, in line with a far-reaching compromise on judicial filibusters, agreed to break the filibuster that had kept her off the federal bench.

It wasn’t easy for Owen to get to this point. She as subjected to nine hours of hearings, answered more than 500 questions and endured 22 days of floor debate. But it was the breakthrough on filibusters that paved the way for her confirmation.

“I am wary, but as Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, ‘Trust, but verify,’ “ Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee told his fellow senators Wednesday. He promised that Senate Republicans would act to limit judicial filibusters if they “erupt for reasons other than extraordinary.”

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada made it clear Wednesday that he wanted to get the debate behind him.

“Let’s not talk about the ‘nuclear option’ any more,” he said on the Senate floor. “Let’s get over this.”

Bush, pleased with the vote on a nominee he said would bring “a wealth of experience and expertise” to the bench, said it should be followed by others. “I urge the Senate to build on this progress and provide my judicial nominees the up-or-down votes they deserve,” the president said in a statement.

On Tuesday, the day after seven Republicans and seven Democrats broke a deadlock over Bush’s controversial court nominees, senators from both parties were trying to sort out the implications of the unusual deal. It was brokered with no involvement of the White House and only minimal consultation with the two parties’ Senate leaders.

Reactions ranged from outrage, particularly from Republicans like Sen. George Allen, R-Va., who had hoped the showdown would clear a path for conservative nominees for the Supreme Court, to predictions of a new age of bipartisanship. Allen said on Fox News radio that Republicans who joined the deal had been “allowed to stray off the team.”

“It shows that individuals in this institution can come together and overcome some of their strongest differences for the good of the nation and the institution,” said Sen. John Warner, R-Va., one of the deal’s architects.

Senate leaders also announced Tuesday that they had agreed to take up the long-pending nominations of three Michigan judges.

Lawmakers on both sides of the filibuster issue, which had threatened to split the Senate apart, questioned whether the compromise would hold.

“This is merely a truce, it is not a treaty yet,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who with Frist had advocated a new procedure that would have deprived the minority of the filibuster to block judicial nominations. “An awful lot depends on good faith.”

Loss of the votes of the seven Republicans who signed onto the agreement stopped Frist from moving forward with the new procedure, which Democrats said would seriously erode minority rights and negate the minority’s voice on future Supreme Court nominations. In turn, the seven Democratic signers pledged that they would resort to judicial filibusters only in “extraordinary circumstances.”

Several Republican signers said the deal would survive only if Democrats abided by that vague condition. “The fact that you are a conservative is no longer an extraordinary circumstance,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Reid joined three other Democratic leaders, Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Debby Stabenow, D-Mich., in writing to Bush, urging him to take advantage of the compromise to “engage in real consultation with the Senate on future judicial nominations.”

Bush welcomed the agreement, saying “these nominees have waited years for an up-or-down on the Senate floor, and now they’ll get one.”

Owen was born in 1954 in Palacios, Texas, a small fishing and agriculture community on the Gulf Coast. Her father died of polio shortly before her first birthday.

She earned a law degree from Baylor University in 1977, finishing at the top of her class and scoring highest among those taking the bar before entering private practice in Houston.

She easily won election to the Texas Supreme Court in 1994 and re-election in 2000.