Nomination of J. Leon Holmes, to be United States District Judge

NOMINATION OF J. LEON HOLMES, TO BE UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE-Continued

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I am not sure I will take my entire 7 ½ minutes, but I do wish to speak for a minute regarding this nomination.

Let me say before we begin that judging a potential judge is not an easy question. The question many of us grapple with is, Would this judge follow the law or would this judge impose his or her own views instead of the law? That is a difficult question for most nominees. I think both sides of the aisle think that way.

Senator Hatch said a few years ago:

I believe the Senate can and should do what it can to ascertain the jurisprudential views of a nominee, that a nominee will bring to the bench, in order to prevent the confirmation of those who are likely to become judicial activists.

Activists go both ways. You can be an activist and want to move the clock way ahead or you can be an activist and want to move the clock way back. If you want to move the body politic further to the left or further to the right, then jurisprudence would dictate. In my judgment, if you use that standard, it is not very difficult to come to the conclusion that Mr. Holmes does not deserve to be on the Federal bench.

It is true that when we evaluate candidacies of judges-at least some of us on this side; I for one-the fact they are district court nominees rather than court of appeals nominees means I give them a little extra room because they have less say and it is not an appellate court. But I think that Holmes is so far over, one of the most far over we have seen, that even though he is a district court judge, he did not deserve nomination, and he does not deserve approval by this body.

Mr. Holmes clearly has been an ardent and passionate advocate for causes in which he genuinely believes. I respect that advocacy. But some of the rhetoric he has used, some of the arguments he has advanced should give one real pause-they sure give me real pause-as to who cares about the impartial enforcement of the rule of law.

Mr. Holmes said that our Nation's record on abortion is comparable to our Nation's record on slavery. Perhaps even more disturbingly on this count, he said that rape leads to pregnancy about as often as snow falls on Miami. That last comment isn't about choice or abortion. It is offensive, it is disturbing, and it shows a pattern of thought. If it were a total aberration, then one might say, well, it is a mistake. But it wasn't.

According to the weather almanacs we have consulted, it snowed once in Miami in the last 100 years. According to a study published by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, over 32,000 women a year become pregnant as a result of rape or incest. I would say to Mr. Holmes, those 32,000 women a year are not a myth. If you were looking at the facts, not what you want to believe because of your deeply held views but the facts, you wouldn't have said that. And certainly you wouldn't have said it casually without doing some research. These 32,000 women are not red herrings. They are real women in real pain, making traumatic decisions about whether to give birth to their tormentor's child.

Unfortunately, that remark may be the most egregious but it is hardly isolated. He said that it is a woman's duty to subordinate herself to her husband and to place herself under the authority of the man. You can see, I hope, why we might be concerned that he is insufficiently attuned to women's rights.

I know the President is going to go tomorrow to Michigan to speak on the issue of judicial nominees. I would like him to tell all the women in the audience what his nominee said about women and their rights. Let's see if he will talk about that tomorrow.

My guess is that 99 percent of the women would be aghast that he said that-whether they are Democrats, Republicans, liberals, or conservatives. I asked Mr. Holmes in written questions whether he was concerned that, for example, a woman advancing a battered woman's defense against her husband would lack confidence in his impartiality. He said he doesn't see why anything he has written would justify any concern that he could not be impartial.

Not only does Mr. Holmes not disavow his assertion that women are bound to subordinate themselves to men, he doesn't see why women should be troubled by this. To paraphrase Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "It is elementary, Mr. Holmes." It is pretty basic stuff. This is not a great epistemological argument. It is very simple why women could be offended. If you cannot see it, you should not be on the bench. If I were a woman in a dispute with a man, and my case was assigned to Mr. Holmes, I would be worried that Mr. Holmes could not even see why I had these concerns. That is troubling.

There is a lot more to be worried about when it comes to the Holmes nomination. In his comments, which have already been printed in the RECORD, just over and over again he defended and endorsed Booker T. Washington's view that slavery was a consequence of divine providence, designed to teach white people how to be more Christ-like. Is the President going to mention that when he goes to Michigan? See what people think of that one. He said of all the cases in history, he would want to have argued the creation case. It is right at the top of the list. I don't know why he said that, since John Scopes was convicted. I guess Mr. Holmes thinks he could have done a better job teaching the evolutionary theory in the public schools. More egregious, in not any of these instances, with maybe the exception of the first, has he disavowed them; he stands behind them. These are not slips of the tongue. This is a man caught, when you look at his writing, in almost a time warp. This man probably doesn't even want to turn the clock back to the 1930s or 1890s but somewhere way back in the 1600s.

Holmes said he believes he possesses sufficient self-transcendence-his words-to be able to set aside his views and judge cases impartially. I don't think it is enough to get up and just say: I will follow the law.

I don't mean to be flip, but it is just not that easy.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.

Mr. SCHUMER. In conclusion, if moderation is a criteria in choosing judges-and it is one of mine-Mr. Holmes abjectly fails the test. I urge that he be defeated.