WP Editorial Board: Senate should confirm Caitlin Halligan to the D.C. Circuit Court

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WHEN CAITLIN J. HALLIGAN was nominated in 2010 to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the prestigious 11-member court had two vacancies. Today, there are three, after Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg took senior status this fall.

Yet some Senate Republicans argue that there is no need to install Ms. Halligan because the court’s caseload has shrunk. Others look suspiciously on her purported views on antiterrorism policy. GOP senators are grasping at straws to block Ms. Halligan’s ascension, perhaps in hopes of preserving the vacancy for a Republican president to fill. These lawmakers rightly objected to such tactics when deployed by Democrats to stall or defeat well-qualified Republican nominees; they should not revert to them now when a Democrat controls the White House.

Ms. Halligan has had a distinguished career and deserves to be confirmed. A graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, she clerked for D.C. Circuit Judge Patricia M. Wald and later for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. She has served as head of the appellate practice at a top New York law firm, as solicitor general in that state and now as general counsel for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. The American Bar Association gave Ms. Halligan a unanimous well-qualified rating. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved her nomination seven months ago; she has been waiting for a floor vote ever since.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/senate-should-confirm-caitlin-halligan-to-the-dc-circuit-court/2011/11/17/gIQAZBLLmN_story.html