An Unworthy Judicial Nomination

A heated debate is shaping up over Judge Charles Pickering, President Bush's choice to fill a vacancy on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Pickering's critics have implied that he is a racist. His supporters have responded that he has warm relations with blacks in his hometown, Laurel, Miss., and that he is being smeared for ideological reasons. We believe that Mr. Pickering bears no animus toward blacks and that charges of racism have no place in this debate. But based on the serious questions raised about his record as a judge, we urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote down his nomination.

In his 11 years as a federal trial-court judge, Mr. Pickering has displayed an undue skepticism toward cases involving civil rights. In voting rights cases, he has been troubled by well-settled legal principles like "one person, one vote" and overly concerned about the burdens that Congress, in enacting the Voting Rights Act, placed on local government. In employment discrimination cases, he has been too willing to accept employers' arguments that such suits are based on disgruntlement, rather than valid claims. He has also shown a hostility to awarding attorneys' fees in civil rights cases; without the fees, few such cases could be brought.

Mr. Pickering, a friend and ally of Trent Lott, the Mississippi Senator and minority leader, is also well outside the mainstream on issues of reproductive choice. He was a driving force behind the Republicans' decision to put a plank in their 1976 party platform calling for an anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution.

Mr. Pickering's views on civil rights and abortion would be out of place on any Court of Appeals. But his positions would be particularly troubling on the Fifth Circuit, which takes in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. It is among the poorest and most heavily minority circuits, and the legislatures in those states have gone as far as any in imposing parental consent and other limitations on women's access to abortion.

The Senate's inquiry into Mr. Pickering's nomination has also uncovered several ethically questionable actions. In 1994, he made contact with the Justice Department, in an extraordinary one-sided communication by a judge, to lobby prosecutors to seek a lighter sentence against one of three men accused of burning a cross in front of, and firing bullets into, the home of a mixed-race couple. Mr. Pickering's critics have also charged that he misled Congress at his last confirmation hearings about contacts he had in the 1970's with the Sovereignty Commission, which worked to preserve segregation in Mississippi. Most recently, Mr. Pickering asked lawyers who appeared in his courtroom to write letters in support of his nomination, a request that creates an appearance of coercion and judicial bias.

In pushing for Mr. Pickering's confirmation, Senate Republicans have disingenuously charged Democrats with moving too slowly on judicial nominations. There are, indeed, an unacceptably high number of vacancies on the federal bench, but many of those openings are the result of Republicans' own calculated inaction on Clinton nominees.

Moreover, the real fault for the slow pace lies with the Bush administration. Judge Pickering is the first of a new wave of more than 50 judicial nominees the Senate is being asked to evaluate. Many of these nominations appear problematic and potentially controversial. If President Bush is committed to speeding up confirmations, he should name men and women who have distinguished records and do not have the hard-right views and ethical problems that Mr. Pickering does.