How Three Decades Of Conservative Chief Justices Turned The FISA Court Into A Rubber Stamp
Reuters has put together a long and detailed piece showing why the court is so compliant. Much of it has to do with who was selected and who selected them.
Selected by the Chief Justice of the United States, FISA judges serve for staggered seven-year terms. Although the court carries 11 judges at a time, 14 have served this year because of routine turnover.
Six of the 14 were originally appointed to the trial courts by George W. Bush; five by Ronald Reagan; two by Clinton and one by George H. W. Bush.
"Since FISA was enacted in 1978, we've had three chief justices, and they have all been conservative Republicans, so I think one can worry that there is insufficient diversity," said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University's Washington College of Law.
The court is currently comprised of 14 judges, 12 of which are Republican. Half are former prosecutors. Reggie Walton helped lead the War on Drugs under William Bennett. James Zagel spent seven years as the director of the Illinois State Police, following a dozen years in the state attorney's office (including three years as Chief Prosecutor). John Bates spent some time as an assistant state's attorney but more notably has spent a large part of his judicial career dismissing cases brought against the US government and its officials, including a challenge to an Obama-approved targeted killing and Privacy Act claim brought against the DOJ. Mary McLaughlin (the sole Democrat) spent four years as a prosecutor. Raymond Dearie has years of experience as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of NY, along with other work done in conjunction with law enforcement. Thomas Hogan was involved in a ruling that restricted public access to Nixon's White House records (and ordered Playboy to continue printing copies in Braille) as well as jailing a NY Times writer for refusing to disclose a source and authorizing an FBI raid on a congressman's office -- a first in the government's history.
It's unsurprising that George W. Bush would find the makeup of the court to his liking when pushing his "War on Terror" policies -- conservatives with backgrounds in crime and (especially) punishment. (There's no bigger crime than terrorism.) Obama should have been the wild card -- someone who could have attempted to tilt things back in a more moderate direction or at least questioned the court's overwhelmingly partisan composition. Instead, he extended and expanded many of Bush's policies and realized there was no one better to carry out these directives than adherents to the party line.
<snip>
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130621/17360623578/how-three-decades-conservative-chief-justices-turned-fisa-court-into-rubber-stamp.shtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
