by ron kampeas & ben harris
jta
In the aftermath of her son Ari’s murder by an Arab gunman on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994, Devorah Halberstam was introduced to a federal judge for the Southern District of New York with a longstanding interest in terrorism-related issues.
In the years since, Judge Michael Mukasey became a fixture in the life of Ari’s family, keeping a photo of the slain teenager on the mantle in his chambers, meeting regularly with his mother and, in March, receiving the memorial award established in Ari’s memory.
“That is the kind of a person he is,” Halberstam said. “He’s an immaculate human being. You don’t find people like that.”
Halberstam and Mukasey would meet each year around Rosh Hashanah in his judge’s chambers in Lower Manhattan. This year’s meeting was scheduled for Monday, Sept. 16. But the day before Mukasey called to say he had an urgent engagement in Washington: President Bush would be introducing him as the White House’s pick as the next U.S. attorney general.
Those who know the retired federal judge say Mukasey, an Orthodox Jew, is a political conservative who kept his politics and religion out of the courtroom.
“Some judges have improperly remained active in Jewish organizational life while they were on the bench,” said Marc Stern, counsel to the American Jewish Congress. “It’s a testament to his probity that he was not among them.”
That does not mean his Judaism is not deeply felt.
Mukasey, 66, is a lifelong congregant at Kehillath Jeshurun on New York City’s Upper East Side. He was educated at its Ramaz school, and his wife for a time was the school’s headmistress. He is close friends with another congregant, Jay Lefkowitz, a top Washington lawyer and a veteran of the Soviet Jewry advocacy movement who is Bush’s special envoy for human rights in North Korea.
Orthodox groups were not shy about claiming Mukasey.
“He’s a man of impeccable character, and it’s nice to see someone from the community nominated to such an important position,” said Nathan Diament, the Orthodox Union’s Washington director.
Mukasey would be the second Jewish attorney general. Ed Levi, who served under President Ford in the mid-1970s, also was known for his independent streak.
A defendant in the first 1993 World Trade Center bombing tried to make Mukasey’s Kehillath Jeshurun membership an issue. He filed an appeal to remove Mukasey as a judge, arguing that his allegiances would prejudice him against Muslims.
Appellate judges dismissed the concerns as “utterly irrelevant.”
In the courtroom, Mukasey has strictly adhered to case law and precedent, according to those who worked with him.
As a judge, Mukasey broke with the White House on a key anti-terrorism issue by ruling that a suspect must have access to a lawyer. And unlike some other judges, he has abjured involvement in Jewish advocacy.
Mukasey’s best-known dissent from Bush administration dogma came in a 2002 ruling in the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen detained as an enemy combatant. He allowed Padilla’s indefinite detention, but rejected the government’s request to sequester him from his lawyers.
“Padilla’s statutorily-granted right to present facts to the court in connection with this petition will be destroyed utterly if he is not allowed to consult with counsel,” Mukasey ruled.
Mukasey’s extensive dealings with terrorism underscore how much that issue has become the Bush administration’s focus in its final days, Stern said.
“What obviously propels the Mukasey nomination forward … is that he’s strong but credible, and that shows how strong those issues of have become to the administration,” he said.
Bush made the background in terrorism central to his nomination.
“Some of Judge Mukasey’s most important legal experience is in the area of national security,” Bush said, standing alongside Mukasey in the Rose Garden.
In accepting the nomination, Mukasey also focused on terrorism.
The focus concerned Stern, who noted that the Justice Department’s bailiwick is much broader than terrorism. “He’s a cipher on abortion; he’s a cipher on civil rights; he’s a cipher on all the hot-button issues that move the administration’s base,” Stern said.
That led the AJCongress to call for a rigorous confirmation process. “Michael Mukasey also appears to be free of the thrall of social conservatives. But though on all three scores he would be a marked improvement over the incumbent, his confirmation should not be a formality,” it said in a statement.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a key member of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, joined the committee’s chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), in promising an expansive confirmation.
Still, Mukasey is likely to get the job — he was one of four candidates Schumer recommended to the White House, and has not irked Democrats.
“It is gratifying that the White House didn’t go for a nominee that they knew in advance would be controversial,” said Sammie Moshenberg, the director of the National Council of Jewish Women’s Washington office.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California