Campaign Action
Donald Trump has been on a nominating spree, having submitted well over 100 nominees to federal courts and U.S. attorney positions. One of those nominees, Charles Goodwin, to serve as a US district judge in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma has gotten a very rare thumbs-down from the American Bar Association, the first "not qualified" rating the ABA has given since 2006.
The ABA committee evaluates judicial nominees on their integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament. The committee typically does not provide explanations for its ratings for lower court judges unless a representative testifies before the Senate. An ABA spokesperson declined to comment on Goodwin. […]
Unlike most of his predecessors in the White House, Trump is not submitting his judicial nominees to the ABA for review in advance of announcing nominations. The ABA is instead doing its review after the nominations become public. President George W. Bush had a similar practice of not sending his nominees in advance, but according to the ABA, every other president since President Dwight Eisenhower has done so.
The ABA's federal judiciary committee has 15 members representing each of the federal judicial circuits in the United States. They give judicial nominees one of three ratings: Well qualified, qualified, or not qualified. A majority of members voted Goodwin "not qualified," while a minority voted him "qualified." One member abstained from voting.
Why they made this majority ruling isn't clear. Goodwin has served as a magistrate judge in the Oklahoma City federal court and before that in private practice. The ABA doesn't have to make their reasoning public, but given how rare this occurrence is, they must have their reasons. Of course, in the last eight years we had a president who actually cared enough about the rule of law to nominate well-qualified jurists.
All the more justification for Democrats to use every tool at their disposal to keep Trump from putting his stamp on the federal judiciary for a generation to come.