Too bad Bush decided to use his first judicial recess appointment to appoint Pickering. As I’ve discussed before, Pickering was among the worst of the Bush judicial nominees.
UPDATE: Readers have pointed me to this and this article defending Pickering, both of which I had previously read, and neither of which I find exonerates him from the criticisms in my original post. (1) It is still highly inappropriate for a judge to lobby the Justice Department regarding a case before him; (2) Choosing to do so on behalf of a cross-burner is an odd choice of folks to champion, even if his coconspirators did get much lighter sentences (such anomalies are not at all rare in our system unfortunately); and (3) This choice becomes even odder when the rationale given for going easy on the cross-burner is in part to avoid pissing off Mississippi’s white folks, a fact not mentioned in either of the two pieces above defending Pickering.
On the issue of Pickering pressuring attorneys who appear before him to lobby on behalf of his confirmation, several professorial colleagues pointed out to me that his behavior does not violate the judicial ethics rules. That can be the Bush Administration’s slogan for Pickering: “Doesn’t violate the letter of the ethics rules! Has the bare minimum of ethics to prevent professional responsibility professors from calling for his impeachment or resignation!”
Imagine if a Clinton nominee had, while a federal district judge, lobbied the Justice Department for a more lenient sentence for a convicted criminal in a case before that nominee. Many of the same folks who have defended Pickering would have been all over that nominee, and Clinton for nominating him. Sorry folks, I’m not going to overlook a nominee’s flaws just because he was nominated by a Republican president.
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