HAMMER: Sul Ozerden Is A Very Weak Fifth Circuit Pick. Kill The Nomination.

The New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on which I completed a judicial clerkship six months ago, is one of the most important federal courts in the country. The Fifth Circuit covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and the inclusion of the nation’s largest border state under the Court’s jurisdiction necessarily means that its appellate docket is rife with high-profile immigration, criminal, and drug trafficking cases. Moreover, Texas has long been the preferred venue of choice for meaningful conservative impact litigation — including but hardly limited to litigation commenced by Texas’s renowned Office of the Solicitor General. Texas’s current lawsuit against Obamacare is a perfect example.

Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi all have one strikingly obvious feature in common: They are deeply red states. Each state has two Republican senators, and three of the six — Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), John Cornyn (R-TX), and John Kennedy (R-LA) — even serve on the powerful U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.