Executive Session

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I join my colleagues in support of the nomination of Jeffrey Meyer of Connecticut to be a U.S. judge for the District of Connecticut. I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for his hard work in shepherding Mr. Meyer's nomination through the process and thank my colleagues and leadership for bringing it to the floor today.

Before I make brief remarks in support specifically of Meyer's nomination, I want to associate myself with the remarks of Senator Leahy and Senator Blumenthal.

There are essentially two ways to try to shut down the government from within. You can try to defund it--and we have seen that effort play out in real terms at great cost to the American people over the last year and a half--and you can also try to depopulate it. You can try to very slowly and methodically take people out of positions by either denying them confirmation into the administration--as we have seen, as a long list of nominees to agencies throughout the Federal Government are being delayed by Republicans--or you can try to keep the judiciary understaffed so it cannot do its work as well.

So I, unfortunately, believe this is part of a pretty methodical policy and strategy on behalf of those who feel as though they have been elected to destroy government from within, to both try to defund the organs of government and then also to depopulate its ranks. That is part of the reason I think we are laboring under delay tactic after delay tactic when it comes to our Federal judiciary. Today, though, hopefully we can unite around a nominee who is singularly qualified to serve on the district court.

I am proud to support Jeff Meyer's nomination--someone who comes from a family with deep roots in public service. Mr. Meyer has worked in the legal system but also has a history of helping the poor and the voiceless in Connecticut throughout his career. Both Senator Blumenthal and I know his father well, Ed Meyer, who served with me in the Connecticut State Senate.

Jeff Meyer comes from a world-class educational background, in part because he got a lot of it in Connecticut. He is a graduate of both the college and the law school at Yale. He has an extensive academic and teaching background. After he graduated law school, Mr. Meyer clerked at the Supreme Court for Justice Blackmun, and then for Judge James Oakes, the former chief judge of the Second Circuit. Currently, he teaches the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School, where he provides pro bono legal services. Before that, he taught at Quinnipiac Law School, where he was honored with their Excellence in Teaching Award.

But even more impressive than his academic background and training is Jeff Meyer's long history of working for a fair and just legal system in Connecticut and, frankly, throughout the Northeast. Even as a law student Jeff Meyer showed a commitment to helping disadvantaged groups by giving legal assistance to homeless clients through the Yale Law School clinic. He actually received an award for his work there from the City of New Haven. Later, he worked as a staff attorney in Senator Leahy's home State of Vermont at Vermont Legal Aid. In Connecticut, he helped keep our State safe by serving as an assistant U.S. attorney for 9 years. Since 2008 he has served on the Connecticut Judicial Ethics Committee--a fairly thankless task, I might add--and he has served on a range of other important State and local committees, including the Advisory Committee for the Selection of the Connecticut Federal Public Defender, the Independent Accountability Panel for New Haven's police department, and the U.S. Attorney's Police and Urban Youth Task Force.

Aside from his academic and community work, Jeff Meyer has also managed to find time in between to litigate complex commercial issues and investigate foreign aid issues. He served as an editor and counselor of the Independent Panel Review of the World Bank Department of Institutional Integrity. And he did an incredibly important tour of duty as the senior counsel of the Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil for Food Program. He also wrote a book on the U.N. oil for food scandal. Along with his book, Mr. Meyer has an impressive body of legal scholarship that includes a wide range of law review articles and opinion pieces on topics ranging from criminal justice issues, to foreign aid, to workplace safety.

I will point out that Jeff Meyer is exceptional in the sense that he has sought work that others in the legal community might avoid. The work he has done on Connecticut's Judicial Ethics Committee or in the independent review process of the New Haven Police Department or even in his work investigating the Oil for Food Program was tough stuff--issues that were controversial that some other lawyers may have avoided. But Jeff Meyer sought places in which his talents were needed and in areas in which others may have looked the other way.

The District of Connecticut is currently about 13 percent understaffed, and this confirmation would fill a vacancy that has existed now for almost 2 years. Because Jeff Meyer has such stellar qualifications, I cannot think of any reason why people in this body would oppose his nomination. I urge all my colleagues to support him.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source