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A project tracking federal judicial nominations and courts.
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JUSTICE PRISCILLA OWEN Senators Discuss the Environment & Speak Out Against Owen Nomination Statement of The Honorable Debbie Stabenow, Senator, Michigan This is a nominee who has been divisive not only on the Texas Supreme Court but in the U.S. Senate. I have received over 2,500 letters and e-mails from my constituents in Michigan opposing Priscilla Owen's nomination. I have received letters from over 60 different organizations, including civil rights groups, advocacy groups, women's groups, environmental groups, and other citizens opposing this nomination." Statement of The Honorable Maria Cantwell, Senator, Washington State She also has been criticized in areas of consumer rights and environmental law. The Los Angeles Times singles her out as a nominee who disdains workers' rights, civil liberties and abortion rights. And even a predominantly Republican court--one considered by legal observers and scholars to be one of the most conservative in this country--Justice Owen still seems to go further than a majority on that court. Time after time, Justice Owen has ruled in favor of business interests over working people, against women, against victims of crime and negligence, and against the environment . Over a career a judge can have many controversial cases. But, as the Austin Statesman points out, Justice Owen is widely known as a nominee that 'could usually be counted on to side in any important case that pitted an individual against business interests to side with business.' I don't think that is the type of representation that we want to have on our courts. . . . In a case challenging the ability of Texas cities to impose basic clean water control, she held the legislature had the power to exempt a single developer from city water pollution controls by allowing the developer to write their own water pollution plan. The majority called her dissent 'nothing more than inflammatory rhetoric.' There are other cases dealing with Texas public information law which I think are important for all of us, for all of our citizens to have access to public information. She wrote that a memo prepared by a city agency about an employee should not be subject to disclosure under the Texas Public Information Law because it discussed 'policy,' an exemption that a majority of others on the board said would be 'the same as holding there is no disclosure requirement at all.' In another similar case about public information laws, she held that a report prepared by the city of Houston and financed by taxpayers could not be disclosed under the Texas Public Information Act. Again, her colleagues criticized her decision not only as 'contradicting the spirit and language of the statute, but gutting it.' " Statement of The Honorable Patty Murray, Senator, Washington State Mr. President, someone watching this debate on C-SPAN today might wonder why the Senate is spending so much time on a judicial nomination. They may watch all our discussions about circuit courts and wonder, how does this affect me? Well, the truth is that it affects all of us. Our Federal courts impact the opportunities, rights, and lives of every citizen, and that is why the appointments to our courts must be made with great care. Since the founding of our Nation, our courts have changed our history, helping us to live up to our ideals as a society by protecting our rights and defending our freedoms. Our courts affect us at the broadest level, from interpreting environmental standards of clean air and water, to guarding important safety and consumer protections. . . . Owen's record clearly illustrates she fails the test of meeting the requirements that she be fair, that she engender trust, that she has the proper experience and temperament, or that she has the ability to represent all Americans, and safeguard their rights. . . . Do not just take my word for it. Let's examine what others, including White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, have said about some of Justice Owen's decisions. Justice Owen is a vigorous dissenter, and her colleagues, including Justice Gonzales, have had a lot to say about her opinions. In one, her colleagues described her dissent as ``nothing more than inflammatory rhetoric.'' Those are pretty strong statements and they provide a window into what kind of judge Priscilla Owen would be on the Fifth Circuit. It is the judgment of this Senator that Priscilla Owen cannot render impartial justice to the people who appear before her court, that she will not seek to safeguard individual rights, and that her temperament is incompatible with serving on the Fifth Circuit." Statement of The Honorable Patrick Leahy, Ranking Democratic Member, Senate Judiciary Committee I have read her written answers, many newly formulated, that attempt to explain away her very disturbing opinions in the Texas parental notification cases. Her record is still her record, and the record is clear. She still does not satisfactorily explain why she infuses the words of the Texas legislature with so much more meaning than she can be sure they intended. She adequately describes the precedents of the Supreme Court of the United States, to be sure, but she simply does not justify the leaps in logic and plain meaning she attempted in those decisions. I have read her responses to Senator Hatch’s “testimony” of two weeks ago, at her second hearing, where he attempted to explain away cases about which I had expressed concern last year. For example, I know what the Chairman explained to her the opinion she wrote in a case called F.M. Properties v. City of Austin. I read how he recharacterized the dispute in an effort to make it sound innocuous, just a struggle between two jurisdictions over some unimportant regulations. I know how, through a choreography of leading questions and short answers, they tried to respond to my question from last July, which was never really answered, about why Justice Owen thought it was proper for the legislature to grant large corporate landowners the power to regulate themselves. Again, I am unconvinced. The majority in this case, which invalidated a state statute favoring corporations, does not describe the case or the issues as the Chairman and the nominee have. A fair reading of the case shows no evidence of a struggle between governments. This is all an attempt at after-the-fact justification where there really is none to be found. Justice Owen and Chairman Hatch’s explanation of the case also lacked even the weakest effort at rebutting the criticism of her by the F.M. Properties majority. In its opinion, the six justice majority said, and I am quoting, that Justice Owen’s dissent was, “nothing more than inflammatory rhetoric.” They explained why her legal objections were mistaken, saying that no matter what the state legislature had the power to do on its own, it was simply unconstitutional to give the big landowners the power they were given. No talk of the City of Austin v. the State of Texas. Just the facts." Full Text Statement of The Honorable Edward M. Kennedy, Senator, Massachusetts Statement of Chairman Patrick Leahy, Senate Judiciary Committee One of the cases where this trend is evident is FM Properties v. City of Austin, 22 S.W. 3d 868 (Tex. 1998). I asked Justice Owen about this 1998 environmental case at her hearing. In her dissent from a 6-3 ruling, in which Justice Alberto Gonzales was among the majority, Justice Owen showed her willingness to rule in favor of large private landowners against the clear public interest in maintaining a fair regulatory process and clean water. Her dissent, which the majority characterized as, "nothing more than inflammatory rhetoric," was an attempt to favor big landowners. In this case, the Texas Supreme Court found that a section of the Texas Water Code allowing certain private owners of large tracts of land to create "water quality zones," and write their own water quality regulations and plans, violated the Texas Constitution because it improperly delegated legislative power to private entities. The Court found that the Water Code section gave the private landowners, "legislative duties and powers, the exercise of which may adversely affect public interests, including the constitutionally-protected public interest in water quality." Id. at 876-77. The Court also found that certain aspects of the Code and the factors surrounding its implementation weighed against the delegation of power, including the lack of meaningful government review, the lack of adequate representation of citizens affected by the private owners' actions, the breadth of the delegation, and the big landowners' obvious interest in maximizing their own profits and minimizing their own costs. The majority offered a strong opinion, detailing its legal reasoning and explaining the dangers of offering too much legislative power to private entities. By contrast, in her dissent, Justice Owen argued that, "[w]hile the Constitution certainly permits the Legislature to enact laws that preserve and conserve the State's natural resources, there is nothing in the Constitution that requires the Legislature to exercise that power in any particular manner," ignoring entirely the possibility of an unconstitutional delegation of power. Id. at 889. Her view strongly favored large business interests to the clear detriment of the public interest, and against the persuasive legal arguments of a majority of the Court. When I asked her about this case at her hearing, I found her answer perplexing. In a way that she did not argue in her written dissent, at her hearing Justice Owen attempted to cast the FM Properties case not as, "a fight between and City of Austin and big business, but in all honesty, . . . really a fight about . . . the State of Texas versus the City of Austin." Transcript at 69. In the written dissent however, she began by stating the, "importance of this case to private property rights and the separation of powers between the judicial and legislative branches. . .", and went on to decry the Court's decision as one that, "will impair all manner of property rights." 22 S.W. 3d at 889. At the time she wrote her dissent, Justice Owen was certainly clear about the meaning of this case - property rights for corporations." Full text Statement of The Honorable Edward M. Kennedy, Senator, Massachusetts Statement of The Honorable Herb Kohl, Senator, Wisconsin Read more about the nomination of Justice Priscilla Owen. Read news commentary about the nomination of Justice Priscilla Owen. Home | Search | Privacy |
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