Victoria Nourse: D.C. Circuit Nominee?

A few weeks ago, Senator Harry Reid said that he expected President Obama to nominate three more people to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit soon.

That hasn't happened yet, but it got me thinking about the people he might nominate.

Could Victoria Nourse be in that group?

In July 2010, Obama nominated Nourse to a Seventh Circuit seat in Wisconsin. She was then a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, as well as former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and its chair, then-Senator Joe Biden.

After one of the home state senators blocked her nomination by not returning his blue slip, she withdrew in January 2012.

Subsequently, Nourse left Wisconsin Law, where she had been a professor since 1993, and became a professor at Georgetown Law in Washington, D.C. (She had also been a visiting professor at Georgetown previously.)

See where I am going with this?

Info
*Nourse's current bio is here.
*A 2011 letter from a bipartisan group of scholars supporting her Seventh Circuit nomination is here.

DC Circuit Decision Today

The Judges Series entry on Chief Judge David Sentelle of the DC Circuit, posted earlier today, mentions that he has participated in decisions related to detainee rights.  As a coincidence, the DC Circuit released one such decision today, authored by Sentelle and covered by Reuters here.  The decision is dated June 30, 2010, but the court did not make it public until today.

Judges Series: Chief Judge David Sentelle

David Sentelle has been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 1987 and its chief judge since 2008.  Sentelle was previously a federal judge in the Western District of North Carolina, as well as a state judge in North Carolina.  Of his style, the American Inns of Court wrote: "Still sporting his trademark cowboy boots and with his distinctive bass drawl, [Sentelle] can mesmerize an audience with an anecdote or a moving story about the law."  Other items of interest:

Nominated by President Reagan to both his federal trial and appellate judgeships.

Served as Presiding Judge of the Special Division for the Purpose of Appointing Independent Counsels from 1992-2006.

Wrote a book, Judge Dave and the Rainbow People, about a group of hippies seeking to use a national park for an annual meeting.  Sentelle, the judge in the matter, stated, "I think I’ve received as many questions about the Rainbow case as about the Oliver North case, the Microsoft appeal, and perhaps even the Monica Lewinsky investigations."

Wrote, or on the panel of, decisions related to detainee rights, see, e.g., here, here, and here, and participated in presentations on national security and terrorism, linked here.  Other speeches are here and here.

Serves as President of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of the American Inns of Court and received a professionalism award from the AIC.

Sits as a member of the U.S. Judicial Conference's Executive Committee.

Worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and also in private practice, both in North Carolina.

Graduated from the University of North Carolina, both college and law school.

Born 1943 in Canton, North Carolina; his father was a mill worker.

Quote: Why the Handshake Never Caught On

[There is a] tradition in the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, where at the end of oral argument the judges come down from the bench and shake hands with the lawyers.  It is a very endearing custom emblematic of the grace and hospitality of the region encompassed by the Fourth Circuit.

Things are different in the District of Columbia Circuit. . . . There is a famous episode from the early nineteenth century involving Judge Buckner Thruston, who was in the habit of finding the lawyers appearing before him deficient in many respects, and in the habit of giving voice to that view.  On one occasion, a lawyer responded in kind, letting Judge Thruston know that he, the lawyer, found the Judge equally deficient.  The Evening Star explained what happened next: "Judge Thruston's reaction was to hustle down from the bench and berate his critic as 'a scoundrel and poltroon,' whom he challenged to step 'outside and fight.'"  Perhaps those sorts of beginnings explain why the tradition never really caught hold in D.C. as it has in Richmond.

John G. Roberts, Jr., What Makes the D.C. Circuit Different?  A Historical View, 92 Va. L. Rev. 375, 375-76 (2006) (footnote omitted).

DC Circuit: No Certificate of Innocence for Deceased Man

The DC Circuit "is so small [geographically] that it does not have a federal prison within its boundaries, so prisoner petitions—which make up a notable portion of the docket nationwide on other courts of appeals—are a less significant part of its work."  John G. Roberts, Jr., What Makes the D.C. Circuit Different?  A Historical View, 92 Va. L. Rev. 375, 376 (2006).

This week, the DC Circuit decided a case that can be traced to one (and in some senses, three) of these relatively few prisoner petitions.