Janice Rogers Brown

Janice Rogers Brown (born May 11, 1949 in Greenville, Alabama) is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She previously was an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, holding that post from May 2, 1996 until her appointment to the D.C. Circuit. She is noted for her libertarian political beliefs and passionate writing style.

President of the United States George W. Bush nominated her to her current position in 2003. However, her nomination was stalled in the U.S. Senate for almost two years due to Democratic opposition to her conservative-leaning libertarian judicial philosophy. She began serving as a federal appellate court judge on June 8, 2005. She was frequently mentioned as a possible Bush nominee to the United States Supreme Court.

Family and education

She earned her B.A. from CSU Sacramento in 1974 and her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from the UCLA School of Law in 1977. In addition, she received a LL.M. degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2004.

Early law career

For most of the first two decades of her career, Brown worked for government agencies. She was Deputy Legislative Counsel for the Office of Legislative Counsel in California from 1977 to 1979. She then spent eight years as Deputy Attorney General for the Criminal and Civil Divisions of the California Attorney General's Office. She was Deputy Secretary and General Counsel for California's Business, Transportation, and Housing Authority from 1987 to 1989 (and a University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law Adjunct Professor from 1988 to 1989).

She briefly entered private practice as an Associate of Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor from 1990 to January 1991, when she returned to government as Legal Affairs Secretary for Governor Pete Wilson from January 1991 to November 1994. The job included diverse duties, ranging from analysis of administration policy, court decisions, and pending legislation to advice on clemency and extradition questions. The Legal Affairs Office monitored all significant state litigation and had general responsibility for supervising departmental counsel and acting as legal liaison between the Governor's office and executive departments. ^* In November of 1994, Wilson appointed Brown to the California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District.

California Supreme Court Associate Justice

In May of 1996, Governor Pete Wilson appointed Brown as Associate Justice to the California Supreme Court. Prior to the appointment, she had been rated "not qualified" by the State Bar of California's Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation, which evaluates nominees to the California courts. She was the first person to be appointed after receiving that rating. The basis of that negative rating, according to the Commission, was her lack of judicial experience. Brown had then been sitting as a Justice on the Third District Court of Appeal of California (an intermediate appellate court below the California Supreme Court) for less than two years. Brown was praised in the JNE Commission evaluation for her intelligence and accomplishments, however.

While on the California Supreme Court, she wrote the majority opinion upholding an amendment to the California Constitution prohibiting affirmative action for women and minorities. Later, in ''Hi-Voltage Wire Works, Inc. v. City of San Jose, Brown castigated a program of racial set-asides adopted by the city of San Jose under the guise of community outreach.

In another case, Brown dissented from an opinion striking down a parental consent law for abortions.

There were times, however, during her tenure on the California Supreme Court that Brown demonstrated purportedly liberal positions on criminal sentencing, freedom of speech and gun control. She was the lone justice to contend that a provision in the California Constitution requires drug offenders be given treatment instead of jail time. In 2000, she authored the opinion in Kasler v. Lockyer, upholding the right of the State of California to ban semi-automatic firearms, and of the Attorney General of California to add to the list of prohibited weapons. Her opinion in that case clearly explained that the decision was not an endorsement of the policy, but rather recognition of the power of the state.

Her reputation for libertarian political beliefs can be attributed to a speech she delivered to the Federalist Society at University of Chicago Law School in 2000. Brown’s speech mentions Ayn Rand and laments the triumph of "the collectivist impulse", in which capitalism receives "contemptuous tolerance but only for its capacity to feed the insatiable maw of socialism." She complains that "where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies," and suggests that the ultimate result for the United States has been a "debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."

Her remarks gained particular attention, however, for her thesis that the 1937 court decisions upholding minimum-wage laws and New Deal programs marked "the triumph of our own socialist revolution", the culmination of "a particularly skewed view of human nature" that could be "traced from the Enlightenment, through the Terror, to Marx and Engels, to the Revolutions of 1917 and 1937." She calls instead for a return to Lochnerism, the pre-1937 view that the Constitution severely limits federal and state power to enact economic regulations. In an exegesis of Brown's speech that was largely responsible for bringing it to public attention during Brown's confirmation process in 2005, the legal-affairs analyst Stuart Taylor, Jr., noted, "Almost all modern constitutional scholars have rejected Lochnerism as 'the quintessence of judicial usurpation of power'", citing in particular "leading conservatives—including Justice Antonin Scalia, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and former Attorney General Edwin Meese, as well as Bork".[http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200505u/nj_taylor_2005-05-03

United States Court of Appeals Judge

She was nominated by President Bush on July 25, 2003 to be a United States Court of Appeals judge. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on her nomination on October 22 of that same year. After her name had passed out of committee and had been sent to the full Senate, there was a failed cloture vote on November 14, 2003. Bush renominated her on February 1, 2005.

On April 21, the Senate Judiciary Committee again endorsed Brown and referred her name to the full Senate once more. On May 23, Senator John McCain announced an agreement between seven Republican and seven Democrat U.S. Senators, the Gang of 14, to ensure an up-or-down vote on Brown and several other stalled Bush nominees, including Priscilla Owen and William H. Pryor, Jr..

On June 8, Brown was confirmed as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by a 56-43 Senate vote. She received her commission on June 10. Although no official announcement of her swearing-in ceremony was made, she began hearing federal cases on September 8, 2005.

During the summer of 2005, she was considered a candidate to replace Sandra Day O'Connor as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, but John Roberts was chosen instead. Later, after the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and a change in Roberts' nomination to replace Rehnquist, O'Connor's position again became available. However, White House counsel Harriet Miers was nominated on October 3. With Miers' withdrawal of her nomination on October 27 speculation again arose that Brown would emerge as President Bush's choice for the Court. On October 31, the President nominated Judge Samuel Alito of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to O'Connor's seat, and he was confirmed by the Senate on January 31, 2006.

External links and references

References

''Hi-Voltage Wire Works, Inc. v. City of San Jose, (2000) 24 Cal.4th 537 , 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 653; 12 P.3d 1068 (California court decision castigating underhand program of race-based contracting set-asides adopted by the city of San Jose, California. Link requires free registration.)