For Immediate Release
5/14/08

Senator Dominic Pileggi
Floor Speech re: Judicial Nominations * May 14, 2008

Thank you, Madam President.

I rise to ask for a negative vote on this package of judicial nominations.

I make this request not based on the individual qualifications of the four men that Governor Rendell has nominated. Rather, I request a negative vote because the governor has chosen to ignore the constitutional directive that he make judicial nominations with the advice and consent of the Senate – and in doing so has missed a historic opportunity to provide diversity on our appellate courts.

These four vacancies were all known more than six months ago, after the election on November 6, 2007, when two Superior Court Judges were elected to the Supreme Court.

In February, Governor Rendell unilaterally nominated the four men we are considering today.

The governor has stated that his role in this process is to "appoint" and that the role of the Senate is to "consent." In the governor's view, the Senate should simply determine whether his nominees meet the constitutional qualifications.

Article V, Section 12, of the Pennsylvania Constitution, requires just three things. Justices and judges must:

• Be citizens of the Commonwealth;
• Be members of the bar of the Supreme Court; and
• Reside in the Commonwealth for one year preceding their election or appointment, and they must continue to do so while in office.

If you accept the governor's premise, the job of the Senate is purely ministerial, reviewing the constitutional qualifications and then rubber-stamping his nominations.

Such a view is inconsistent with the plain language of our Constitution and past practice in filling judicial vacancies.

The Pennsylvania Constitution, in Article V, Section 13, states:

A vacancy in the office of justice, judge or justice of the peace shall be filled by appointment by the Governor. The appointment shall be with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the members elected to the Senate, except in the case of justices of the peace which shall be by a majority.

From the governor's perspective, the word "advice" is meaningless in that section of the constitution.

However, the authors of the Constitution clearly intended "advice" to mean something, because the phrase "advice and consent" is different than language used in Article IV, Section 8.

In that section, the Constitution states that non-judicial gubernatorial appointments "shall be subject to the consent of two-thirds or a majority of the members elected to the Senate as is specified by law." The word "advice" is notably missing.

The meaning is crystal clear: The Senate is to have an advisory role when it comes to appointing judicial officers.

This makes good sense, because the judiciary is an independent branch of government.

The process of filling a judicial vacancy should be different than, for example, filling a spot on the governor's cabinet. This view is consistent with the historical practice since the Constitution was amended in 1968.

Governor Tom Ridge, a Republican serving with a Republican majority in the Senate, had the same issue three times during his first term in office.

Governor Ridge made nominations to fill three separate vacancies on the Supreme Court – and each of his first nominations were withdrawn because they lacked sufficient support in the Senate.

On April 17, Senator Scarnati and I wrote to Governor Rendell to outline these concerns and to ask that he withdraw the nominations so that we could make a fresh start on this process.

We also expressed our view that this the concurrent confirmation of four appellate court jurists gives us a tremendous opportunity to diversify our higher courts.

Currently, the entire membership of the Supreme Court comes from only three out of our 67 counties.

Only one woman sits on the Supreme Court, and only two African-Americans sit on all of our appellate courts combined. There are no Hispanic or Asian appellate jurists.

Only one of the 27 currently serving appellate judges hails from Northwestern Pennsylvania, Northeastern Pennsylvania or the many counties in between.

We have a chance to diversify the membership of these courts to more accurately reflect the face of Pennsylvania. We should not miss this opportunity.

Madam President, for these reasons I ask for a negative vote on this package of judicial nominations.

  Print this page

 E-mail this page

Back