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Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, pending before the U.S. Senate is the nomination of Darrel Papillion, to be U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana. I want to say a word about this nomination because it indicates a positive development in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which the Acting President pro tempore and I share membership in, and the fact that this is a bipartisan nomination.
On May 11, Darrel Papillion was voted out of committee by a vote of 15 to 6. Senators on the Republican side--Graham, Cornyn, Kennedy, and Tillis--joined all committee Democrats in voting for this nominee. He received the unanimous rating of ``well qualified'' from the American Bar Association, and he has the obvious support of the two Louisiana Senators--Cassidy and Kennedy--both of whom returned positive blue slips, which is committee process, and both of whom are Republican.
Papillion had a B.A. from Louisiana State University and a J.D. from LSU's Paul M. Hebert Law Center before clerking for Associate Justice Catherine Kimball on the Louisiana Supreme Court.
He entered private practice in New Orleans where he specialized in the defense of products liability actions. Since moving to Baton Rouge in 1999, Papillion's main areas of practice have been personal injury and wrongful death litigation. Papillion has tried at least 33 cases to verdict, including more than a dozen jury trials. He has been a special prosecutor for the East Baton Rouge District Attorney's Office and a mediator for mediation cases in South Louisiana. He has served as a special master in State court on three different occasions.
He is deeply involved in the Louisiana legal community in having served as the president of both the Louisiana State Bar Association and the Baton Rouge Bar Association. Let me repeat that--the president of the Louisiana State Bar Association.
The committee received several letters of support from individuals and organizations on his behalf: the former President of the Louisiana State Bar Association, the former president of the New Orleans Bar Association, six former opposing counsels, and the treasurer of the New Orleans Chapter of the Federal Bar Association.
The reason I read that in detail is that, if I went back home to Illinois, like I did last week, and told people we are considering judges before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which I chair, their first reactions are, can't you find a judge that both Democrats and Republicans agree on?
Here is one. He wouldn't be here before us today but for the fact that the two Republican Senators from Louisiana reached an agreement with the Biden White House for this man to have a lifetime appointment to the Federal bench.
Now, in case that sounds like front page news, it happens, and it happens more often than not. And the reason I come to the floor at this moment is to make sure it is a matter of record.
During the Trump administration, Democrats approved what we call blue slips for 120 nominees for Federal court. Some of those were with two Democratic Senators, in a State like Illinois, but there was a level of negotiation and cooperation. As the senior Senator from Illinois, I had to sit down with the legal counsel from President Trump's White House and put nominees on the table, saying: Here is one that we want, and here is one that you want. I think we can agree on those two. Let's move forward.
And we did it. That happened, as I said, over 120 times with Democratic Senators working with the Trump White House. We filled all of the vacancies of Illinois--virtually all of them--during the Trump administration with that bipartisan agreement.
Today, we have another one, two Republican Senators with a Democratic President. It happens. And for it to happen, you need two things: the will for Members to move, to put nominees on the bench; and, secondly, a person so qualified that both sides don't feel they will be embarrassed by them. There are more judges and attorneys than there are politicians, and, in this case, I think we found just that kind of nominee.
Now, we have a lot more to go. There are roughly 87 pending vacancies in the district courts across the Nation. Almost half of them are in States with two Democratic Senators, and the other half in States with at least one Republican, maybe two Republican Senators.
We are trying to reach a point where we have an agreement on this, and I think we can do it. I could list some other Senators whom I am working with on the Republican side to fill those vacancies as well. I think that is what the American people are looking for--more evidence that we are trying to find some common ground, despite the obvious political differences in this Nation.
This is an issue that I think is timely, and I wanted to bring it to the attention of the Senate and do it on the floor this afternoon.
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