The Senate Judiciary Committee did more than approve Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court today. It also reported Office of Legal Policy nominee Christopher Schroeder and other nominees to the Senate by voice vote.

Christopher Schroeder (Duke)

The appointees reported by voice vote include: Thomas McLellan to be deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy; Alejandro Mayorkas to be director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the Department of Homeland Security; and Cranston J. Mitchell to be a commissioner of the U.S. Parole Commission.

The senators present did not make any specific comments regarding Schroeder during the meeting today. But ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said Republicans had “some concern about the nominees.”

Schroeder’s nomination for the DOJ office that oversees judicial nominations and legal policy has flown a bit under the radar. First, President Obama’s original choice for the job, Mayer Brown partner Mark Gitenstein, withdrew under fire from liberal groups outraged about his advocacy of tort reform on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Then, Schroeder’s June 24 confirmation hearing was disrupted and cut short by a Senate quorum call to consider impeachment charges against Texas U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent. Read our previous post about the OLP nominee here.

The 19 senators present did, however, have a lot to say about Sotomayor.

She passed the panel by a 13-6 vote that was mostly along party lines. Sessions and Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah), Charles Grassley (Iowa), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), John Cornyn (Texas) and Tom Coburn (Okla.) voted against reporting Sotomayor to the Senate. Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) was the only Republican to vote in favor of sending Sotomayor to the Senate.

Graham said today during the meeting that Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” remarks “did bug the hell out” of him. But he said those comments were not enough for him to vote against what he called a “competent” and “well qualified” nominee.

Hatch echoed many of the sentiments of the dissenting Republicans in his statement before the panel today.

“In the end, Judge Sotomayor’s record regarding her approach left too many unresolved controversies and too many conflicts with fundamental principles about the judiciary in which I deeply believe,” Hatch said. “As a result, I regret that I cannot support her appointment to the Supreme Court.”

Read our previous post about the Republican opposition to Sotomayor here.

Christopher Schroeder, the Duke University law professor nominated June 4 to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, is slated for a Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Tuesday.

Christopher Schroeder (Duke)

Schroeder’s nomination for the DOJ office that oversees judicial nominations and legal policy has flown a bit under the radar. First, President Obama’s original choice for the job, Mayer Brown partner Mark Gitenstein, withdrew under fire from liberal groups outraged about his advocacy of tort reform on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Read our story about that flap here. (Gitenstein, a former staffer on the Judiciary Committee for Vice President Joe Biden when he was in the Senate, landed on his feet with a nomination to be ambassador to Romania).

Now, the committee vote on Schroeder will take place inside a media circus: Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court is slated to come before the Senate Judiciary panel the same day.

At the same July 28 business meeting, the panel will also consider the nominations  of Thomas McLellan to be deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy; Alejandro Mayorkas to be director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the Department of Homeland Security; and Cranston J. Mitchell to be a commissioner of the U.S. Parole Commission.

Schroeder’s nomination is uncontroversial, but it appears unlikely he’ll come up for a confirmation vote before the Senate recesses for its August break. Other DOJ nominees who’ve already passed through the committee are still waiting for a Senate confirmation vote, including Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel; Tom Perez to head the Civil Rights Division, and Mary L. Smith to head the Tax Division. Read our previous coverage here.

The confirmation hearing for Christopher Schroeder, nominated to be Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy, will be next Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced today.

Christopher Schroeder (Duke)

Schroeder is a Duke University law professor and a former Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Clinton administration. At the OLP, he will be in charge of judicial nominations and legal policy. Read his bio here.

The June 24 hearing will also review the nominations of Thomas McLellan to be Deputy Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and Alejandro Mayorkas to be Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for the Department of Homeland Security 

Schroeder served on the Obama transition team for the Department of Justice. A critic of Bush-era legal policies, he was nominated after the president’s first pick for the job, Mark Gitenstein, withdrew under criticism about his lobbying work.  Gitenstein, a former top Judiciary Committee staffer for then-Sen. Joe Biden, had worked with a U.S. Chamber of Commerce group that advocated tort reform. Read our previous coverage of Gitenstein here.

President Obama has found a job for Mayer Brown partner Mark Gitenstein, who had been slated to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy until an outcry over his lobbying doomed his nomination, read our coverage here and here.

Gitenstein will be Obama’s pick for ambassador to Romania, press release here.

Why was the administration so persistent in trying to get Gitenstein a political appointment?

From the press release:

Previously, Mr. Gitenstein worked as a Senate staff member for 17 years— both in Senator Biden’s personal office, and then as Chief Counsel with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

And one can guess that Gitenstein had nothing but nice things to say about Biden in his book about the rejection of Supreme Court nominee Richard Bork.

The White House has confirmed that President Obama will nominate Duke University law professor Christopher Schroeder to be Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice, which is responsible for shepherding judicial nominees through the confirmation process.

Christopher Schroeder

Schroeder, who’s been rumored for the job for weeks, was not the administration’s first choice.  As we reported earlier, Mayer Brown partner Mark Gitenstein, a former staffer on the Judiciary Committee for then-Sen. Joe Biden, was up for the job to head the Office of Legal Policy, but liberal groups opposed his nomination because of his work on tort reform for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Schroeder, who served on Obama’s presidential transition team, teaches classes on Constitutional law, environmental aw, and Congress at Duke.  He has served as chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee under Biden and worked in the Department as acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration.

Schroeder is of counsel to O’Melveny & Myers.  While at Berkeley law school, he was a year ahead of now Democratic staff director and chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee Bruce Cohen, who ended up succeeding him as head of the law review.

If confirmed, he would be the chief policy adviser to Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General David Ogden.  Schroeder would oversee legislation related to law enforcement and the federal court system, and play a significant role in nominations for the judiciary. Although less of a prolific blogger than Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnsen and OLC deputy Marty Lederman, Schroeder was part of their liberal group pushing for more accountability from the Bush DOJ legal advisers during the last few years. Read about them here. 

You can also read the bio from the White House press release below:

Christopher H. Schroeder is Charles S. Murphy Professor of Law and Professor of Public Policy Studies, and director of the Program in Public Law at Duke University.  His publications include a leading environmental law casebook, Environmental Regulation: Law, Science and Policy (6th Edition, 2008), Presidential Power Stories (with Curtis A. Bradley, 2008), A New Progressive Agenda for Public Health and the Environment (2005), a project of the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR), co-edited with Rena Steinzor.  He has served on National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine committees to evaluate the use of human intentional dosing studies by EPA and the adequacy of the U.S. drug safety system.   Schroeder has served as acting assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, where he was responsible for legal advice to the attorney general, the executive office of the president and other executive branch agencies on a broad range of issues, including separation of powers, other constitutional issues, and matters of statutory interpretation and administrative law.  He has also served as chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  He is of counsel to the firm of O’Melveny and Myers.  Schroeder received his B.A. degree from Princeton University in 1968, a M.Div. from Yale University in 1971, and his J.D. degree from University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall) in 1974, where he was editor-in-chief of the California Law Review.

President Obama won’t nominate Mayer Brown partner Mark Gitenstein to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy after an outcry over his lobbying, Roll Call reports. A former top Judiciary Committee staffer for then-Sen. Joe Biden, Gitenstein drew the ire of Public Citizen and other groups. Liberal activists were particularly angry about his work on tort reform for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Gitenstein also served as an outside counsel for the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, which led the push for a 2005 law limiting class-action lawsuits by pushing more of them into the federal court system.

The Office of Legal Policy oversees judicial nominations and legal policy. Gitenstein hasn’t registered as a lobbyist since July 2008, when he began work for the Obama campaign. Obama campaigned against the influence of lobbyists. He issued an executive order in January requiring senior appointees in his administration to recuse themselves for two years from any matters that “directly and substantially” affect their former clients.