Miguel Estrada
Miguel Angel Estrada (born September 25, 1961) is an American lawyer who became embroiled in controversy following his 2001 nomination by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Concerned that he was too conservative, Democrats in the Senate used a filibuster to block his nomination.
Biography
Estrada was born to an upper-class family in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. After his parents divorced, he immigrated to the United States to join his mother when he was 17, arriving with a limited command of English.
He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree from Columbia in 1983. He received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree magna cum laude in 1986 from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Estrada served as a law clerk to Judge Amalya Lyle Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then clerked for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court.
From 1990 until 1992, Estrada served as Assistant U.S. Attorney and Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section, U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York. In 1992, he joined the United States Department of Justice as an Assistant to the Solicitor General for the Clinton Administration. In those capacities, Estrada represented the government in numerous jury trials and in many appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, he practiced law in New York with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Nomination
George W. Bush nominated Estrada to a position on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on May 9, 2001; the court is very influential, and is widely seen as a stepping stone to the Supreme Court. He received a unanimous "well-qualified" rating from the American Bar Association. Democrats opposed the nomination, claiming that Estrada had not provided enough information about his legal views. A bipartisan group of former Solicitors General wrote a letter objecting to the Democrats' demand for memos that Estrada had written while he was with the office on the grounds that such a request was unprecedented and would endanger the Solicitor General Office's ability to provide confidential legal advice to the Executive Branch. Some observers claimed that the Democrats also wished to avoid giving Bush points with Hispanic voters. The Democrats hotly contested this, however internal memos to Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin mention liberal interest groups' desire to keep Estrada off the court because his Latino heritage made him "especially dangerous" as a potential future Supreme Court nominee (see[[1]]).
After Democrats conducted a protracted filibuster of Estrada's nomination (twenty-eight months), he withdrew his name on September 4, 2003. Bush nominated Thomas B. Griffith in his place, who was confirmed in 2005.
Estrada is currently (as of 2006) a partner at the Washington, D.C., law office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where he is a member of the firm's Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Group as well as the Business Crimes and Investigations Practice Group.
References
Lane, Charles. "Nominee for Court Faces Two Battles; Senate Panel to Focus on Ideology, Immigrant Past". Washington Post. September 24, 2002.