Chuck Schumer: “I rise to speak on our nominee, the confirmation of Debra Livingston. She is a legal superstar from my home State of New…”

“I rise to speak on our nominee, the confirmation of Debra Livingston. She is a legal superstar from my home State of New York, and she is nominated to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Let me just say we in New York have a system in place for nominating Federal judges that works. The President and I work together to name highly qualified consensus candidates to the Federal bench. There is often rancor when it comes to judges from other parts of the country, but there has been very little when it comes to New York. It shows that when both sides wish to compromise, we can probably get there. That is because in New York we have an effective and bipartisan way to select qualified and, almost without exception, moderate candidates for the bench. Ms. Livingston is squarely in that mold. Her career so far has spanned private practice, criminal prosecution, and academia, so she has a deep understanding of the law gained from many perspectives, from the courtroom to the classroom.”