Southwick Confirmed

The US Senate has just voted 59-38 to confirm Judge Leslie Southwick to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Opponents had singled out two of the 7,000 opinions Southwick has written throughout his career as objectionable, then tried to hang the history of the entire 5th circuit on him.

The nomination tested a fragile agreement in the Senate to block President Bush's judicial nominations only in "extraordinary" circumstances. Some Democratic opponents said Southwick's writings, combined with the troubled racial history of the circuit, met this amorphous standard. But Democrats did not have the votes to sustain a filibuster.

Urged by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the AFL-CIO and the Congressional Black Caucus, some Senate Democrats who opposed the nomination made their case nonetheless. They said they didn't believe he is a bigot, but that the 5th Circuit could not afford a judge who has less than an "exemplary" record on civil rights.

"When it comes to the area of race and racism, we have to bend over backwards," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"I certainly don't think he's a racist," Schumer added. "His words have to be seen in context. Like it or not when he's nominated to the Fifth Circuit he's carrying 200 and some odd years…on his back. That is the issue here."

At issue were two cases he was involved in as a state appeals court judge in Mississippi. One was a 1998 decision that upheld the reinstatement of a social worker who used a racial slur in reference to a co-worker. Three years later, Southwick joined a ruling against a bisexual mother in a custody case. He also joined what some activists said was an anti-gay concurring opinion.

Southwick's supporters pointed out that those were among 7,000 opinions across the nominee's career and that none of those facts addressed his qualifications. Conservative legal groups began pressuring Democrats from traditionally Republican states to at least give Southwick an up-or-down vote.

It's the courts folks. That is what is at issue in 2008. The courts.