The American Bar Association pushed back at Justice Department plans to limit the group from reviewing Trump judicial nominees, cautioning that it would be a mistake not to fully vet those who have been tapped for a lifetime appointment to the judiciary.
“It is deeply disturbing that the Justice Department has decided to restrict access to judicial nominees without justification or basis,” ABA President William Bray wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“While we recognize that presidential administrations and the Senate take into consideration many factors during the nomination and confirmation process, a nominee’s professional qualifications for a lifetime appointment to the bench should be a foundational consideration. The Standing Committee’s impartial peer evaluations are unique and have consistently provided a significant source of information considered by senators from both parties that is not otherwise available during the confirmation process,” he added.
“Considering these are lifetime appointments, it is surprising that the Justice Department would seek to restrict the work of the Standing Committee.”
Bondi last month said the Justice Department was cutting ABA access to nominees because the group “no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications, and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic administrations.”
She said nominees would no longer sit for interviews with the group nor would the ABA receive non-public information like bar records.
Bondi also accused the association of failing to “fix the bias in its rating process.”
The ABA indicated it never actually received the letter, saying in a press release that the correspondence “was posted on [Bondi’s] X feed but not received by the ABA.”
But the ABA nonetheless said claims of bias are “unsupported by the facts” and that the Trump administration’s nominees score in line with those of other administrations over the 72 years the group has done its vetting.
“The numbers indicate that the Standing Committee has rated nearly 97% of the nominees to be qualified for every administration including the first Trump administration,” Bray wrote.
The ABA did rank 10 of President Trump’s first term judicial nominees as not qualified, determining that five lacked trial or litigation experience.
For its ratings, the ABA recommends those being rated have at least 12 years practicing law. It also conducts an extensive review of a nominee’s legal writing, and also conducts confidential interviews with judges and peers to assess “the nominee’s integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament.”
A nominee’s ideology or judicial philosophy are not part of the review.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.