Washington — President Bush on Thursday ended the American Bar Assn.'s half-century role in vetting prospective nominees to the federal bench.
He did it with a subtle rap at the group's advocacy work on policy, which includes support for abortion and reluctance toward the death penalty.
White House Counsel Al Gonzales notified ABA president Martha Barnett in writing that the administration would no longer give the lawyers' group advance word on names under consideration and first crack at researching prospective nominees.
"In our view, granting any single group such a preferential, quasi-official role in the nomination process would be unfair to the other groups that also have strong interests in judicial selection," Gonzales wrote.
"It would be particularly inappropriate, in our view, to grant a preferential, quasi-official role to a group, such as the ABA, that takes public positions on divisive political, legal and social issues that come before the courts."
At a news conference, Barnett said an isolated committee of ABA lawyers would continue to study and rate nominees according to their records. But she worried that doing so after the names become public could prove confrontational. "We are concerned that politics may be taking the place of professionalism in the review," Barnett said.
Bush signed off on the change in a private meeting with Gonzales just before the letter to Barnett, along with one to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was sent.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.