Leahy Coy on New 'Blue Slip' Policy (may move federal judge nominees without state Senator approval)

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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy is being coy about whether he will keep honoring an informal committee tradition that would allow Republican senators to block some of President Obama's judicial nominees quietly, without resorting to a filibuster.

At issue is the committee's "blue slip" policy, whereby nominees for appellate and district courts do not advance without the approval of both home state senators. The practice, named for the color of the paper that senators use to signal their approval or disapproval, dates back to at least 1917.

But it is up to the committee chairman to decide whether and how to observe the practice, and different chairmen have done it differently. Leahy honored the tradition during the last Congress, when a Republican was in the White House. But he might be having a change of heart now. "I intend to look very carefully at it," he said in an interview Tuesday.

There are 27 states with at least one Republican senator, and 14 of those states have two GOP senators.

If Leahy decides not to observe the blue slip practice as scrupulously as he did the last two years, there could be a dramatic impact, particularly on appellate courts. For example, of the four vacancies on the conservative 15-member 4th Circuit, President Obama ostensibly will nominate one candidate from North Carolina (one Republican senator) and one from South Carolina (two Republican senators). Then again, Leahy did not move a South Carolina nominee to the 4th Circuit in the 110th Congress either, even though both of South Carolina's Republican senators supported the nominee.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20090204/pl_cq_politics/politics3024470_3


Hatch would have little room to talk.