When it comes to becoming a federal judge, who you know can be as important as what you know.

        Take the case of Northern Kentucky's David Bunning, an assistant U.S. Attorney in Covington nominated by President Bush as a federal judge for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

U.S. District Court Judge nominee David Bunning appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill last week. Behind him (right) is his father, Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. (Associated Press photo) | ZOOM |

        Mr. Bunning, 35, is younger by at least 13 years than the average age of 945 federal judges appointed since 1976. He was rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association's judiciary committee, which determined that Mr. Bunning doesn't have the experience to serve as federal judge.

        Last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee — which must vote on his nomination — he was criticized for attending an unprestigious law school and compiling an unimpressive academic record while there.

        But Mr. Bunning has something that could outweigh all the negative comments made about his nomination — a father who is a U.S. Senator.

        Sen. Jim Bunning, a Southgate Republican, recommended that President Bush nominate the youngest of his nine children for the federal judgeship in Covington being vacated by the retiring William Bertelsman.

        When David Bunning was nominated by the president in August, Jim Bunning, 70, a member of Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame, said his son “perfectly fit the model that the president has said he wants to follow in filing judicial vacancies — competent, qualified individuals who will firmly apply the law, and who will interpret the Constitution, not try to rewrite it.”

        Legal experts who study the federal judiciary say connectionsare at least as important, if not more, than credentials when it comes to the appointments. And that can be a problem for candidates who may be qualified, but are from groups — the African-American community, recent immigrant communities, women — that historically have fewer connections in high places.

        “It's a political process,” said Washington lawyer Judah Best, who sat on the ABA's judiciary committee during the 1990s. “More likely than not he or she is nominated because of a friend, a relative, a friend of a relative or a political connection.”

        Sheldon Goldman, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the author of six books on the federal court system, said the most qualified candidates are often passed over.

        “There are minimum qualifications, and from what I gather Bunning has that,” Mr. Goldman said. “But, "is he the best-qualified?' is obviously very debatable.

        “It never hurts to have friends in high places.”

        In many states — including New York, Wisconsin and California — nominating commissions appointed by legislatures or other state officials screen and recommend potential federal bench nominees.

        But Kentucky and Ohio still operate on a sort of political patronage. When it came time to seek federal judge recommendations, Mr. Bush — a Republican — went to Sen. Bunning and Kentucky's other Senator, Louisville Republican Mitch McConnell, who chaired Mr. Bush's 2000 election campaign in Kentucky.

        Along with David Bunning, Kentucky's senators recommended two other high-profile Kentucky lawyers:

        • Karen Caldwell, 45, a former U.S. Attorney who helped oversee BOPTROT, an early 1990s federal probe into public corruption at the Kentucky statehouse. She once dated Mr. McConnell.

        • Danny Reeves, 44. He once represented Covington-based Ashland Oil, one of Kentucky's largest corporations, and is a partner at the Lexington office of Greenbaum, Doll & McDonald.

        Mr. Reeves and Ms. Caldwell have been approved, sailing through the confirmation hearing in November with little questioning.

        The number of women and minorities increased during President Bill Clinton's terms.

        Mr. Goldman found that 17.4 percent of Mr. Clinton's appointees were African-American, compared to 6.8 percent for George Bush and 2.1 percent for Ronald Reagan.

        For women, those numbers are 28.5 percent for Mr. Clinton, 19.6 percent for Mr. Bush and 8.3 percent for Mr. Reagan.

        Cincinnati lawyer Ken Lawson, an African-American, said he knows David Bunning and believes he's qualified for the federal bench. But Mr. Lawson would like to see more minorities considered for federal appointments.

        “Definitely there needs to be more consideration, especially when we know that a good portion of the defendants that stand before the bar in federal court are African-American,” he said.

        Connections may have played a role in President Clinton's 1995 appointment of lawyer Susan Dlott to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in Cincinnati.

        Ms. Dlott's husband, attorney Stan Chesley, raised millions of dollars over the years for Mr. Clinton, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

        And it is not unprecedented for a U.S. Senator to have a son up for a federal appointment.

        Strom Thurmond Jr., the 29-year-old son of U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., has been nominated to serve as a federal prosecutor in South Carolina. His appointment is awaiting a vote by the full Senate.

        But the case for Mr. Bunning has been tougher to make.

        At 35, Mr. Bunning is 14 years younger than the average age of federal judges appointed by Presidents Clinton and Carter and 13 years younger than those tapped by Presidents George Bush and Ronald Reagan, according to research Mr. Goldman published in the March-April edition of Judicature, a journal printed by the Chicago-based American Judicature Society.

        He was rated unqualified for the job by an American Bar Association (ABA) committee that studied his career, experience and education, making Mr. Bunning the only one of Mr. Bush's 64 judicial nominees to be so ranked.

        With 10 years as an attorney — all of it spent prosecuting cases in federal court — Mr. Bunning falls short of the 12 years experience the ABA says is needed to be considered qualified for the lifetime appointment, which comes with a $142,000-a-year salary.

        In testimony last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, ABA committee member David Weiner said Mr. Bunning compiled an unimpressive “middle-of-the-class law school record” at the University of Kentucky.

        U.S. News and World Report magazine ranks UK's law school at 50th in the country, tying it with the University of Cincinnati's law school.

        “It is a combination of average academics, limited civil experience, repetitious and routine criminal matters, writings which — in my words — "just do the job,' serious doubts by respected members of the bench and bar and no intellectual spark or legal enthusiasm that carry the day for our committee,” Mr. Weiner, a lawyer from Cleveland, told the Senate panel during Mr. Bunning's Dec. 10 confirmation hearing.

        But the ABA apparently did not feel as strongly about Mr. Bunning's lack of qualifications as Mr. Weiner did. It asked a second lawyer, Mr. Best, to conduct another investigation into Mr. Bunning's background because of a split on the ABA's Judiciary Committee over his qualifications.

        “He stands above the crowd,” Mr. Best told the committee, adding that Mr. Bunning is qualified for the appointment.

        Mr. Best said complaints about nepotism and concerns raised over Mr. Bunning's education and experience were “background chatter” mainly fueled by resentment that a Senator's son landed the coveted appointment.

        And the unqualified rating from the ABA hardly dooms federal judge nominees. According to the ABA, since 1981 five nominees have been rated unqualified — three were appointed, one died and one withdrew.

        In the area of education, Mr. Bunning was criticized for graduating from UK's law school.

        But research by Mr. Goldman found that only 20 percent of President Clinton's federal judge appointees attended a “prestigious” Ivy League law school.

        “If we add ... such prestigious schools as Berkeley, Chicago, Duke, Georgetown, Michigan, New York University, Stanford, Texas, Vanderbilt and Virginia, the proportion of Clinton appointees with a prestige legal education rises to about 38 percent,” Mr. Goldman said. “The figure for the Bush appointees ... was 34 percent.”
       

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