Arlen Spector

Senator Arlen Specter, Ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has just announced that he will vote NAY on the nomination of Elena Kagan to be solicitor general of the United States. The vote has not yet occured (it will sometime in next six hours as I understand), but given Senator Specter's intellect, legal analytical ability, and his reputation for bipartisanship and fairness, this is very significant and it represents strong leadership that other senators would do well to examine and follow.

Wendy E. Long, counsel to The Judicial Confirmation Network, today made the following statement on the United States Senate vote, 61 31, on the controversial nomination of Elena Kagan to be the Obama Administration's Solicitor General:...

Since the election of President Obama, the Committee for Justice and others have called on the President to renominate some of George W. Bush's unconfirmed judicial nominees, in order to show bipartisanship and match the similar gesture made by Bush in the first year of his presidency. We're delighted to see that Sen. Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee's ranking member and a man who knows a thing or two about bipartisanship, has put his considerable weight behind the suggestion. In a letter to Obama released today, Sen. Specter names three unconfirmed nominees who deserve "particular" consideration. They are Peter Keisler, Judge Glen Conrad, and Judge Paul Diamond, Bush nominees to the D.C., Fourth, and Third Circuits respectively.