Trent Lott: “Judge Southwick was awarded the Judicial Excellence Award by the Mississippi State Bar Association, and he was rated not…”

“Judge Southwick was awarded the Judicial Excellence Award by the Mississippi State Bar Association, and he was rated not just well qualified but unanimously well qualified by the American Bar Association. This is supposed to be the gold standard. The previous nominee for this position was not given that. He was given a ``not qualified'' rating by the bar association. So they don't just rubberstamp nominees, they look very closely at them. If there is a question about his temperament, if there is a question about his record on civil rights issues, or anything else, they would have found it and they would have included it in their recommendations. And, by the way, this is the same nominee who, 1 year ago, was unanimously referred by the Judiciary Committee to be a Federal district judge. Now, 1 year later, there are those who question the same record they had a chance to review last year. Of the opinions he actually authored, there is no criticism of the more than 1,000 decisions where he actually wrote the opinion. I assure you, they were scrubbed and reviewed very carefully. There are two decisions in 7,000 where he concurred but did not write the decision, where questions have been raised. I know we all make mistakes, and we choose to associate sometimes with situations or people we regret later. I know he would do some of his decisions differently now if he had them to do over again.”