Left-wing law professor working for ABA is hostile to conservative judicial nominees in review process

Washington Times:

She’s not a senator, but Cynthia Nance plays an enormous role in shaping the debate over some of President Trump’s judicial picks.

Ms. Nance, former dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law, handles the American Bar Association’s judicial ratings for nominees to federal courts in North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas, which make up the federal 8th Circuit.

The ABA’s role is one the more opaque parts of the process, but Republicans are pushing it into the light, accusing her of allowing personal bias, particularly a fealty to abortion rights, to color her ratings.

The ABA recently rated Jonathan Kobes, a Trump pick to sit on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, “not qualified,” saying he didn’t have a long enough record of legal writings.

And a year earlier, Ms. Nance led the ABA review committee that rated another Trump pick, Leonard Steven Grasz, “not qualified.” Judge Grasz would win confirmation, but not before accusing the Nance-led panel of inappropriate questions on abortion and referring to him as “you guys” — which he took as a pejorative reference to Republicans.

To SenateJudiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, the treatment has gone overboard.

He said Ms. Nance’s left-leaning activism dates back more than a decade, including opposing Justice Samuel A. Alito’s confirmation despite the ABA rating him “unanimously well qualified.”

She also has retweeted comments on Twitter mocking the late Justice Antonin Scalia and his view of originalism, the Iowa Republican said.

In addition, the law professor also wrote a letter to the Obama administration opposing legal protections for religious organizations such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, which challenged Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate.

The ABA declined to provide a statement about Ms. Nance, and she didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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It is not just her.  The ABA has leaned left for decades.  While I was once a member, I dropped my membership decades ago seeing it as of no value.  I think the Federalists Society does a better job of screening potential judges.