DOJ restricts ABA's access to vet and rate judicial nominees
The Department of Justice is taking significant steps to thwart the ABA’s long-standing efforts to impartially evaluate federal judicial nominees.
In a letter posted on X on Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy will not ask judicial nominees to provide waivers that allow the ABA to access their bar records and other nonpublic information. Bondi also said nominees will not respond to the ABA’s questionnaires or be interviewed by the association.
“Unfortunately, the ABA no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications, and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic administrations,” according to the letter, which was addressed to ABA President Bill Bay. “The ABA’s steadfast refusal to fix the bias in its ratings process, despite criticism from Congress, the administration, and the academy, is disquieting.”
The ABA has not yet commented on the attorney general’s letter.
Since President Dwight D. Eisenhower first requested the ABA’s participation in 1953, the Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has assessed judicial candidates on three metrics: professional competence, integrity and judicial temperament. The three standards are further explained in an in-depth backgrounder on the standing committee’s policies.
The evaluation is nonpartisan; no candidate is assessed for their “philosophy, political affiliation or ideology.” The standing committee also never suggests or recommends judicial candidates. The standing committee has only three ratings: well qualified, qualified and not qualified.
“This is a seismic change in the judicial nominations process,” U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement posted on X on Friday. “This decision overturns a practice that has been in place for nearly 70 years under Republican and Democratic administrations alike in order to provide cover for unqualified and extreme nominees who would crumble under a nonpartisan review by their peers.”
The ABA’s president appoints the 15 members of the Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary for staggered three-year terms. Each federal district has a member on the committee except for the 9th Circuit at San Francisco, which has two due to its size.
Prior to Bondi’s announcement, the ABA’s evaluation would begin when the Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary received a judicial candidate’s completed Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire and a waiver of confidentiality by the DOJ. A member of the standing committee, acting as the lead evaluator, would read the candidate’s legal writings, research their background and conduct extensive interviews with their colleagues.
Toward the end of the process, the evaluator would meet with the candidate and give the individual the opportunity to respond to any adverse comments that could reflect poorly on them. Evaluators who thought they would ultimately recommend a not-qualified rating would alert the standing committee chair so that a second evaluator could be appointed to conduct a review and provide another recommendation.
All reports and recommendations were provided to the chair, generally within 30 days. The standing committee members then voted on the rating—with the chair abstaining, except in the case of a tie.
This is not the first time a presidential administration has made a change to the ABA’s ratings process. Prior to President George W. Bush’s tenure, the norm was for the standing committee to complete its evaluation before the official nomination. Bush instead chose to announce his judicial nominees before the standing committee evaluated them.
President Donald Trump followed suit during his first term, as did President Joe Biden.
The Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary previously came under fire after some of Trump’s first-term judicial nominees were rated not qualified. Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time criticized those ratings.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to begin its hearings on the second Trump administration’s judicial nominees on Wednesday, Reuters reports.
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