Jerome Holmes

I was watching C-Span yesterday (yes, I really must get a life) and they were talking about one of President Bush's nominees for the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, Jerome A. Holmes. I had never heard of this man, so I didn't know anything about him. I was listening to Sen. Orin Hatch talk about him in glowing terms.

Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry, a Democrat, also wrote the Judiciary Committee to support this nomination. Governor Henry said that Mr. Holmes is "“a highly qualified candidate, a superb lawyer, with a reputation for fairness, ethics and integrity. In short, I do not think you could have a candidate more highly qualified and regarded than Jerome Holmes. ” In short, he is a superb lawyer with a reputation for fairness, ethics, and integrity". It seems to me that that is exactly the formula we should consistently use in appointing nominees to the federal bench.

One thing he said stood out in my mind, the N.A.A.C.P. don't seem to like him. Why? I had to find out, of course, so I looked him up. Evidently, Mr. Holmes is an African American, and he is NOT in favor of "affirmative action". I already like him.

In particular, the critics take issue with Mr. Holmes'’ opposition to government-imposed racial preference policies. Let me emphasize what I mentioned a few minutes ago, that Mr. Holmes helped create and chairs his law firm'’s diversity committee. In the private arena, he works to recruit and retain qualified lawyers of various racial and ethnic backgrounds. He also believes that race-based policies were once necessary to address the effects of past discrimination. Mr. Holmes would be the first African-American judge on the Tenth Circuit. At the same time, like two-thirds of Americans, Mr. Holmes opposes current programs that condition admission to public universities on race, not to address past discrimination but to create future diversity.

I realize that when affirmative action was first implemented, there was a need for it. I know we still have work to do, but I believe we have come a long way. I tend to belive the same as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he said, "...children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". I was quite pleased to hear that Judge Holmes was approved by the Senate today - 12 Democrats joined 54 Republicans and one independent in supporting the nomination.