Darlene Superville
Associated Press
via Yahoo! News
1/6/2011
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Wednesday resubmitted a batch of federal judicial nominations that didn’t clear the Senate last year, including four that provoked strong objections from some Republican lawmakers.
Obama sent 42 names to the Senate. They include 35 nominees for federal district courts and seven for the appellate courts.
The most controversial of the four is Goodwin Liu, a dean at the University of California, Berkeley, law school. Liu was renominated for a seat on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. He also is seen as a potential Supreme Court pick by a Democratic president.
Republicans have criticized Liu for negative comments about then-Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, now a justice on the Supreme Court.
The others contentious nominees are Edward Chen, Louis B. Butler Jr. and John J. McConnell Jr., all nominated to become U.S. District Court judges.
Republicans now control six more seats in the rearranged Senate, making it less likely that lawmakers will approve the most controversial of Obama’s picks this time around.
In fact, Sen. Orrin Hatch, a former chairman and still a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pledged immediately to vigorously oppose Obama’s “most extreme judiciary nominees.” Hatch, R-Utah, said their “activist approach would control rather than follow the Constitution.”
Republicans criticized Liu’s nomination from the start.
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