Owen Nomination

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE

OWEN NOMINATION

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I notice the Senator from Alabama is here, and I believe he wants to speak on the Owen nomination. I will turn the floor over to him in a few minutes.

There are a couple of things I want to finish responding to regarding what the Senator from North Dakota and the Senator from Nevada have said, and the way they characterize Justice Owen—as an activist, as somebody who is out of the mainstream, and in terms of judicial qualifications.

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I just point out that the picture they paint is totally at odds and inconsistent with the fact that Justice Owen has broad, bipartisan support in the Senate, and it is only a narrow minority of the Senate that is blocking the bipartisan majority from actually voting. To me, that is not evidence of an extreme position or somebody who is out of the mainstream.

I point out and remind my colleagues that former Texas Supreme Court justices, Republicans and Democrats, a long list of former Presidents in the State bar of Texas, Republicans and Democrats, have endorsed her confirmation. That is hardly evidence consistent with the portrait that her detractors are attempting to paint and that was painted by the Senator from North Dakota just a few moments ago. In her last election, 84 percent of the voters in Texas voted for her
reelection—hardly consistent with the picture of an extreme, out-of-the-mainstream person and nominee.

I will tell you that in 2000 virtually every major newspaper in Texas endorsed her reelection. Here again, that is not consistent with the portrait being painted today by her opponents.

Let me finally address the issue on which Justice Owen has been criticized, and that is the Texas parental notification statute. I point out to my colleagues that Justice Owen had no choice but to interpret the Texas parental notification statute as adopted by the Texas Legislature. She had no choice. She did her best. I think it is a record of which she and the Senate can be proud.

But I think some of the arguments against this nominee are really wolves in sheep clothing. In other words, I think some of the special interest groups that are opposing Justice Owen's nomination really object to the Texas parental notification statute—a statute which I strongly support because I believe it protects parental rights, in order to at least be involved in one of the most serious and profound decisions that a young girl may have to make in her young life, when under Texas law, if she wanted to get her ears pierced at a doctor's office, she could not do so without parental consent.

This law does not require consent; it requires notice to at least one parent before a minor child decides to get an abortion. As I say, I think a lot of the arguments being made against Justice Owen and this nomination are really masked by an underlying objection by some of these special interest groups to the fact that Texas has—like the vast majority of States—a parental notification law. Eighty-four percent of the American public supports parental rights and laws requiring that a minor child give notice at least to a parent before getting an abortion.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the validity of those laws as not impeding access to an abortion, but merely involving a parent and letting a parent know. Of course, if for some reason, within the letter of that law, a parent cannot be notified, or should not be in the eyes of a judge, there is a judicial bypass provision, and that was exactly the law that Justice Owen was duty-bound to interpret as a member of the Texas Supreme Court in dealing with that Texas parental notification statute.
Justice Owen, in a vast majority of those cases, voted with a majority of the court and dissented from the majority less often than two other justices on that same court.

I would point out that the author of the Texas parental notification law, Senator Florence Shapiro, supports Justice Owen's confirmation.

One other point. I hope we can finally put this issue to bed because it seems as if it gets trotted out every couple of days when it comes to the Owen nomination, and that is the allegation that Alberto Gonzales, White House counsel, formerly a member of the Texas Supreme Court who served with Priscilla Owen, accused her of judicial activism. That is just not true. That is not the fact, and anyone who cared enough about the issue would certainly read the opinions that are referred to by those who are making that fallacious claim.

What happened in that case is some members of the court accused Judge Gonzales of misreading the statute. He stated it would be judicial activism for someone to change the law to suit their own personal beliefs. He did not say Judge Owen had done that.

To me, that settles the issue completely. Here again, you find the facts more divorced from what is happening, what is being said as you see a person, a fine, decent person, a highly qualified candidate for this judicial office, being attacked unfairly. As you see the facts twisted and this caricature again being painted, it bears no relationship to the facts.

I remember Senator ARLEN SPECTER the other day, I think it was in the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying it is clear the Rules of Evidence that apply in court that somebody speak from personal knowledge, that it be trustworthy, it be credible, do not apply to statements made on the floor of the Senate or in the Senate Judiciary Committee. People repeat facts other people say that may be completely wrong or by people who have a motive to bend the truth.

Justice Owen, has been a victim of people who have bent the truth or who care nothing for the truth and who care only for defeating this very fine nominee by our President for this judicial office.

Mr. President, we are not going to give up the fight to have a bipartisan majority of the Senate vote on either Judge Owen's confirmation or on the confirmation of Miguel Estrada. As we heard yesterday before the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, constitutional scholars said there are serious constitutional problems with the argument that somehow the cloture rule, which requires 60 votes to cut off debate, can trump the Constitution, which requires only a majority vote.

Senator Specter yesterday alluded to something called the nuclear option. He said he was not going to talk about it. All I wish to say is we are not going to give up, and I will not give up when I see a good person, an honest, a decent person who has worked hard, who has risen to the top of the legal profession, who has become a judge and excelled in her job as a judge, who has been faithful to the oath she has taken to interpret the law and not to be a superlegislator or be a legislator wearing a black robe, I am not going to stop as long as it is possible to do anything within my power to see her confirmed and to see that justice and fairness be provided to this good and decent person.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.