"I've a constitutional responsibility to nominate well-qualified men and women for the federal courts – I have done so.” - President Bush, 2/14/05
"Nominations Sent to the Senate…Thomas B. Griffith, of Utah, to be United States Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit” - White House Press Release, 2/14/05
"Thomas B. Griffith, President Bush’s nominee for the federal appeals court in Washington, has been practicing law in Utah without a state law license for the past four years, according to Utah state officials.” - Washington Post, 6/21/04
Under Utah law, Griffith's only option for obtaining the state license was to take and pass the state bar exam, an arduous test that lawyers try to take only once. He applied to sit for the exam, but never took it, Utah bar officials confirm.[...]
Griffith discovered in November 2001, a year after he joined Brigham Young, that his District law license had lapsed several years earlier, in 1998, for failure to pay his dues. He immediately paid his dues and renewed his D.C. license, Nowacki said. But for the first year in Utah, he was advising Brigham Young, a Mormon university in Provo, without a current law license from any state.
A lawyer who specializes in legal ethics said Griffith's two licensing lapses should disqualify him from a lifetime appointment to one of the nation's most important federal benches [the federal appeals court], second only to the Supreme Court.
"This moves it for me from the realm of negligence to the realm of willfulness," said Mark Foster, a Zuckerman Spaeder attorney who represents lawyers in ethics matters. "People who thumb their noses at the rules of the bar shouldn't be judges."
WaPo article June 2004
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