Mr. President, I rise to speak today on the nomination of Michael Walter Fitzgerald, a highly qualified nominee to the United States District Court for the Central District of California. The vacancy Mr. Fitzgerald would fill has been declared a judicial emergency by the Judicial Conference of the United States. The Central District is the ninth-busiest court in the country in terms of filings per judgeship, and it has several vacancies that need to be filled. I wish it had not taken four and a half months to see Mr. Fitzgerald confirmed, but I am very grateful that the Senate is able to make progress on his nomination today. I urge my colleagues to support this nomination. Mr. Fitzgerald was born in Los Angeles in 1959 and attended California's public schools. He received a scholarship to attend Harvard College, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1981. After graduating from Harvard, Mr. Fitzgerald taught at Anaheim High School. He then attended Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was managing editor of the Industrial Relations Law Journal and graduated Order of the Coif in 1985. Following law school, he clerked for Judge Irving R. Kaufman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Mr. Fitzgerald has over 25 years of experience practicing law. After one year in private practice he became an Assistant United States Attorney in the Central District of California, where he served from 1988 through 1991.…
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