After days of clashes and deadlock that brought the state Capitol to a complete standstill, the legislature’s judiciary committee began voting Tuesday on Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s batch of nominees for Superior Court judgeships.
The breakthrough came after Rell said she is committed to nominating more members of minority groups to the bench.
Rell’s spokesman, Rich Harris, said Tuesday that Rell intends to be “appointing a qualified, approved minority candidate to the bench in the coming months, following a thorough and rigorous recruiting and vetting process. Connecticut is a state rich in its racial, ethnic and social diversity, and that diversity should be celebrated.”
One of the problems, Harris said, is that only 4 percent of the candidates on the official list for judgeships are members of minority groups.
Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, the longtime co-chairman of the legislature’s judiciary committee who has often clashed with the governor’s office, said, “I’m delighted about the outcome of this. We all have an obligation – all of us – to reach out … by trying to encourage people to get involved.”
Lawlor encouraged attorneys to take the first step in becoming a judge by downloading an application from the Judicial Selection Commission, which is available online.
Lawlor’s co-chairman, Sen. Andrew McDonald, said the committee did not have sufficient information on which lawyers are on the list in the highly secretive process. While Rell’s nominees have been placed under the spotlight over the past week, McDonald said the issue is much broader than the most recent group of nine nominees.
“We have a lack of diversity in law schools,” McDonald said. “We have a lack of diversity in our municipal law departments around the state. … I can guarantee you that these nominees, if they are approved, are going to be more sensitive” about issues of diversity in the years ahead on the bench.
The first committee vote Tuesday came on John L. Carbonneau, an unaffiliated voter and labor lawyer from East Lyme who attended the University of Connecticut as an undergraduate and later received his law degree in 1980 from the Catholic University of America. While the votes are still open until the committee meeting ends, both Democrats and Republicans voted in favor of Carbonneau.
State Rep. Kenneth Green, a Hartford Democrat, said he is still unclear what criteria are used to determine whether someone is qualified to earn the judge’s robes. Overall, 38 attorneys applied last year, and 24 were rejected, he said.
“I am still very uncomfortable with the process of the Judicial Selection Committee,” Green said. “As an African American male, I was deeply disappointed of not having anyone of color on the original list” from Rell.
Green voted against Carbonneau, but state Rep. Ernie Hewett of New London – who had raised questions recently about racial diversity – voted in favor.
Green said he still has “some very serious concerns” about Republican Laura Flynn Baldini, a Yale-educated lawyer from West Hartford with 12 years of experience at the bar. At 39, Baldini is the youngest of Rell’s nominees and has come under fire for lacking the experience of Rell’s other nominees, including six who are at least 54 years old.
“I think her testimony demonstrated that she is not qualified to be on the bench,” Green told his colleagues early Tuesday afternoon.
But Rep. Kevin Roldan, a Hartford Democrat, immediately defended Baldini – saying that he knows her well as “an intelligent individual, a thoughtful individual” who deserves the committee’s support for a judgeship.
Sen. Edwin Gomes, a Bridgeport Democrat, said he agreed with Green on the overall issue – saying that Green represented the thoughts of the majority of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus. Gomes said that Baldini did not answer the questions well during her testimony on Friday night, prompting him to vote against her nomination.
Rep. Toni Walker, a New Haven Democrat, and others said that a high number of those in the criminal justice system and in prison are members of minority groups. The judges, however, largely are not.
“It has been a very, very tough road of the last few days,” Walker said. “We have two Connecticuts here, and it’s been wider and wider. … The two Connecticuts have to stop. … We have to have a better system. … If you cannot empathize, then don’t obstruct. You may feel it’s not in your neighborhood, but eventually it will be.”
“The system is broken. Something is wrong,” said Hewett, the father of three children. “When everybody else does 50 percent, you have to do 150 percent just to survive. … I hated what we had to do yesterday, but we had to get people’s attention.”
He added, “It’s about personalities. … Why don’t we just go and change the system and pick who you like?”
Sen. Edward Meyer, a Guilford Democrat and longtime attorney, said, “This issue is not just an issue for the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus. This is an issue for all of us.”
But Rep. Themis Klarides, a deputy House Republican leader, said, “When we talk about minorities all the time, does that include women? As women, we are minorities, technically. Sometimes, it’s confusing to me. … I want to make sure we understand that minorities covers a whole plethora of groups.”
The question over having enough minority nominees on the bench goes back more than a decade for a period covering the past three governors and the past four House Speakers. In the 1990s, then-Rep. William Dyson of New Haven and others pushed hard for more representation and spoke about it on the House floor.
State Rep. Arthur O’Neill, a Southbury Republican, said that 85 percent of Gov. John G. Rowland’s judicial appointees were white, and 81 percent of Rell’s appointees have been white.
“If you’re not sitting at the boardroom table, sometimes you have to bang on the boardroom door to be heard,” O’Neill said. “There needs to be a more aggressive recruitment effort. I’m not going to ask members of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus how many people they have gone up to and asked them to be judges.”
Sen. John Kissel, an Enfield Republican, said he wanted to commend the members of the caucus for their efforts during a public hearing Friday night.
“There were no inappropriate questions. They were all on point,” Kissel said. “I know what it’s like being a minority – as a Republican in this building in the last several years” in a Capitol where Democrats hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers. “We have a defining moment now to turn a corner.”
But Rep. William Hamzy, an attorney who serves as a deputy House GOP leader, said it is a “dangerous” path to equate the number of minorities in prison with the lack of minorities on the bench.
Rep. John Hetherington, a New Canaan attorney, said, “She has certainly the intellectual strength to become a very fine judge. Judges don’t come to the bench completely formed. They are built by the experience. … She’s young and necessarily of lesser experience, but I have no doubt about her.”
Hetherington mentioned that former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, who wrote the majority opinion in the landmark education ruling of Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, had very little judicial experience when he came to the bench.
Rep. Patricia Dillon, a New Haven Democrat, said, “It’s been wonderful to watch this process. It’s been great democracy. … I do think we’ve fallen behind. That’s simply true. … We’ve also voted on some people with pretty thin resumes who were inside players.”
Dillon said she was sorry that the nominees had been “caught up in forces that are much bigger than themselves” and witnessed multiple delays in the process.