It would be good to have a criminal defense lawyer on the bench for a change. Gotta love that Constitution thingy. Wax seems like a decent guy. No more corporate & wall street-y lawyers or prosecutors on the bench, please. They've done enough damage already. E pluribis unum.

I vote (in the sense of anonymously commenting on a blog) for Steven Wax. It would be nice to see someone who has been a public defender become a judge of the District Court, if for no other reason to balance the enormous over-representation of former prosecutors on the bench. Looks like a well qualified bunch, all in all.

Mojo,

Rarely if ever to "corporate lawyers" in the sense of transactional attorneys ever get appointed to the bench; it's a litigator's game. Though, I guess Michael Simon qualifies in the sense of him being the head of the litigation department at one of Portland's biggest bucks law firms that mostly serves wealthy corporate clients.

Kantor is clearly the cream of that crop.

Balmer and Wax are disasters in waiting.

They're all men. There isn't a single woman judge or attorney who is qualified to at least be on the short list for these two positions?

Anon -

Last I looked there is only one former prosecutor on the federal bench in Oregon, Michael Mossman (sp?) the former US Attorney.

Prosecutors seem routinely ignored as federal judicial candidates in Oregon. Lezak; Turner; Rogers, none ever made the grade. Though Rogers had the best hook of all.

Oregon seems to wind up with state Circuit Court trial judges as federal district judges.

Gus Solomon, Bob Belloni, Otto Skopil, Jim Burns, Mike Hogan, Helen Fry, Jim Redden, Owen Panner, Ed Levy, Ann Aiken, and so many others all were other than prosecutors, and most were former state court judges.

The Southern Distruct of New York is amazing in terms of the numbers of former Assistant U.S. Attorneys who wind up on that bench.

Oregon, historically, is very different in the backgrounds and sourcing of its federal district judges.

Hmmmm ... why would anyone be shocked they are all men? The legal system has a lock on the good old boys club syndrome.

I found one of those guys chatting ex parte with opposing counsel in his chambers. An old friend, supposedly. It completely undermined my sense that his decision in my case was fair.

OMG. Henry Kantor, the slooooooooooowest Judge in Oregon history. And every ruling of his I've ever read makes little to no sense and I'm not a lawyer. I don't have a strong opinion on any of the others, although I find Balmer's opinions more to my liking.

Marco Hernandez should be on that list. Unfortunately, he was nominated about a year ago by Dubya after Gordon Smith passed his name along.

That nomination was probably the only unbiased decision ever made by the Bush White House/Justice Department. Unfortunately, the fact that Dubya nominated him probably killed his chances of being re-nominated by President Obama after the Senate ran the confirmation clock out last session.

Too bad. Judge Hernandez is a great guy and a fantastic judge with a compelling life story.