Editors at National Review Online share their concerns about recent federal judicial confirmations.
Joe Biden has been stocking the federal bench with an increasingly radical and unqualified raft of judicial nominees. Thus far, his choices have been waved through blindly by a compliant Senate. Biden’s nominees have been confirmed at a faster pace than those of Donald Trump or prior modern presidents.
Traditionally, senators have taken the view that the president is entitled to some deference in his choice of judges. This norm has been breaking down for some time, but vestiges of it still remain. Senator Lindsey Graham, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has voted with Democrats for over a dozen nominees this year. Biden’s judges have yet to get anything but a rubber stamp from Democratic senators who will be seeking the support of moderate and conservative voters next year in West Virginia, Arizona, Montana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.
It is time for the Senate to say no to the worst of Biden’s judicial nominees. Three in particular demand scrutiny: Michael Delaney, Maria Araujo Kahn, and Charnelle Marie Bjelkengren.
Delaney, a former New Hampshire attorney general, has come under fire for his aggressiveness in representing a New Hampshire private school in a lawsuit filed by a 15-year-old girl alleging sexual abuse. We are generally inclined to give significant leeway to lawyers for their choice of clients, but this does not excuse them from all accountability for how they treat others with the power of the legal system. When the girl filed suit anonymously as a “Jane Doe” and requested that the court keep her name sealed to avoid death threats, Delaney threatened to expose her identity unless she agreed to a confidential settlement. …
… Justice Kahn, a justice on the Connecticut State Supreme Court nominated for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, comes from the belly of the anti-free-speech beast. She spent years as a “diversity trainer” who compelled attendees to watch an animated video titled “How Microaggressions Are Like Mosquito Bites.”
