Attorney Stephen L. Tober, of Portsmouth, has been appointed chair of the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, the panel that conducts peer reviews of federal judicial nominees and directly reports to lawmakers.

Tober, the first NH lawyer to serve in that position, will supervise the ABA’s review of nominees to the federal judiciary. The process is conducted by a committee with representatives from every federal judicial circuit. Tober served as the First Circuit representative on the 15–member committee from 2001 to 2004. He takes office on Aug. 9 and will chair the panel at a time when the federal judicial nomination process is at the nation’s center stage.

The committee’s role changed when President George W. Bush took office – since the early 1950s, the committee had provided pre-nomination screening advice to the White House. Upon taking office, Bush declared he would not provide names to the ABA before nomination. The ABA committee did not change its process, however, and continued to provide input on the nominees to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Department of Justice. (Nominees also are provided with the committee’s report.) Tober said during his three-year tenure, he voted on more than 250 nominations, and personally investigated and wrote reports on seven nominees, including candidates for posts in other circuits due to an imbalance of workload. Under the nomination timetable, the ABA’s committee’s work must be completed quickly and with a minimum of fanfare.

Interviewed before rejoining the committee as chair, Tober could not comment on when the ABA’s review of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts would be completed. With the retirement of an ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist expected in the near future, along with other pending judicial nominations in the circuits and district courts, Tober said, “It’s clear I am going to have a lot of work to do. I am going to have to keep my desk clear.”

Since Roberts was nominated before Tober’s term as chair began, members of the committee who conducted the nominee’s review will be presenting their information to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tober, as the current chair, will be present at the hearings, he said.

The committee rates each nominee “Well Qualified,” “Qualified” or “Not Qualified.” While some nominees receive majority/minority ratings, the majority rating is the official rating of the Committee. Ratings of judicial nominees are posted on the committee’s Web site at www.abanet.org by Congressional session and are available for those nominated during the 105th Congress to the present. 

From time to time, the committee is asked by the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify at a nomination hearing. This generally occurs whenever a Supreme Court nominee is being considered and in cases where the committee has rated a nominee “Not Qualified.”

Tober, the NH State Delegate to the ABA’s House of Delegates, was president of the NH Bar Association from 1988 to 1989. He got to know Michael Greco of Boston, the incoming president of the ABA, during the mid-1980s when Greco was president of the Massachusetts Bar Association. Greco at the time was working with another NH Bar leader, L. Jonathan Ross (NHBA President from 1985 to 1986) and WilliamWhitehurst, then-president of the State Bar of Texas on the Bar Leaders for the Preservation of Legal Services, an ad hoc group of state bar leaders that lobbied the ABA to take a stand on preserving funding for the Legal Services Corporation, then under threat of elimination by the Reagan Administration.

Other well-known lawyers who have chaired the ABA Committee on the Federal Judiciary have been Warren Christopher, Secretary of State in the Carter Administration, Maine attorney Ralph Lancaster and Greco.