Political Quotes

“Mr. President, it is my distinct honor to rise in support of Paul Oetken's confirmation to the bench of the Southern District of New York. We have a very deep pool of legal talent in New York, but Paul's nomination is one everybody is talking about. Paul is brilliant, well rounded, and unwavering in his dedication to public service and his commitment to rule of law. His confirmation will only improve the workings of one of the best and busiest courts in the country. I look for three qualities in judicial candidates: excellence, moderation, and diversity. Paul's Excellence is provable on paper. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa and Yale Law School and has worked in the highest echelons of two of the three branches of government, including for the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice and for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. He has also climbed the ranks of private legal practice, serving most recently as the head of litigation for the large New York media company Cablevision, one of our fine companies in New York. I consider a broad range of experience to be an important training ground for teaching judicial candidates the second quality I look for: moderation. I do not like judges who tend to be too far to the right, but I do not like judges who come from a perspective that is too far left either. Paul Oetken fits the bill of a mainstream, moderate judge.…”