Good morning Pragmatic Obots.
The series concludes today with the most recent Obama-appointed African American judge – – – the Honorable Paul J. Watford.
On October 17, 2011, President Obama nominated Paul Watford to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit is the nation’s largest circuit court. Its jurisdiction covers 62 million residents of California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Arizona, Montana, Alaska and Hawaii. The U.S. Senate confirmed Judge Watford on May 21, 2012 in a 61–34 vote.
Sen. Charles Grassley led the rebublican opposition. He said Judge Watford had given a speech criticizing Arizona’s immigration law and had invoked international law in a brief opposing the three lethal injections procedure used by the state of Kentucky. The American Bar Association unanimously awarded Watford its highest rating of “well qualified.”
Judge Watford was born and raised in Orange County, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1989 from the University of California, Berkeley and in 1994 he received a J.D from the UCLA School of Law, where he graduated Order of the Coif (top ten percent of graduating class). Watford also served as an editor of the UCLA Law Review.
After law school, Judge Watford clerked first for Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski, and then for the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsberg of the U.S. Supreme Court.