Foreign

Home page

Foreign

Democratic Senator preventing Matthew Bryzaâ€™s appointment to post of ambassador to Azerbaijan prevents one more appointment

10 January 2012 09:34 (UTC +04:00)

APA reports quoting The Washington Post that now Menendez is holding up Obamaâ€™s nomination of a highly qualified federal judge, Patty Shwartz, to the court of appeals. Judge Shwartz has yet to receive a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee because Mr. Menendez is invoking the home-state blackball to which the Senate generally defers. The US press reported on this mysterious and unusual hold by a Democrat of a nomination by a Democratic president, it noted that Menendez had been the subject of a 2006 corruption investigation by the New Jersey U.S. Attorneyâ€™s Office that was led by James Nobile, Judge Shwartzâ€™s long-time companion. In response to these claims, Menendez issued a statement acknowledging that he was blocking the nomination and saying his concern was entirely centered on what he deemed to be Judge Shwartzâ€™s deficiencies in the law: â€œIn my opinion, Judge Shwartz did not adequately demonstrate the breadth of knowledge of constitutional law and pivotal Supreme Court decisions . . . that we should expect from a United States Circuit Court judge: â€œI reassure that the personal pique has nothing to do with the revenge feeling.â€

It is interesting that a unanimous panel of the American Bar Association gave Judge Shwartz its highest rating. Judge Shwartz graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and has served as a magistrate judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey for the past nine years.

According to the US legislation, the US President presents the nominations for the membership in Court of Appeals to the Senate. It is one of the rare cases in the countryâ€™s history that one of the senators opposed the appointment of the judge from its state to the high judicial authority. The newspapers try to substantiate this step by Democratic-Senator from New Jersey Robert Menendez with the tensions inside the Democratic Party on the eve of the presidential elections.