STEPHEN L. TOBER, the New Hampshire state delegate to the American Bar Association, has been appointed to its Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary by ABA President Robert Hirshon.

Tober, of Portsmouth and a former NHBA president, represents the First Circuit on the 15-member panel. According to a description on the ABA’s Web site, www.abanet.org, the committee’s "sole function is to evaluate prospective nominees referred to it by the attorney general or the White House. Further, the committee restricts its evaluation to issues bearing on a prospective nominee’s professional qualifications. The committee does not consider a prospective nominee’s philosophy or ideology. The president and the Senate may consider other aspects of the prospective nominee’s qualifications."

"The Committee’s process is structured to achieve impartial evaluations of the integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament of prospective nominees for the judiciary. The committee’s goal is to support and encourage the selection of the best qualified persons for the federal judiciary," the committee’s description said.

The committee was in the news recently when the Bush administration discontinued a practice begun during the Eisenhower administration of providing the ABA Standing Committee with the names of federal judicial nominees on a confidential, pre-nomination basis.

According to Roscoe Trimmier, Jr., of Ropes & Gray in Boston, the committee’s new chair, the ABA panel continues its screening process, providing information and ratings on nominees confidentially to the attorney general, White House counsel and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Since March, the Bush administration has made 44 nominations, including the nomination earlier this month of Jeffrey Howard, the former NH Attorney General and US Attorney, for the First Circuit judgeship formerly held by Norman H. Stahl, who has gone on senior status.

Tober, the state ABA delegate representing ABA members in NH, joins two other New Hampshire attorneys in prominent ABA roles. Manchester attorney L. Jonathan Ross of Wiggin & Nourie, the NHBA delegate, is chair of the Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense (SCLAID), and fellow Manchester attorney Jack B. Middleton, of McLane, Graf, Raulerson & Middleton, serves as ABA secretary.

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