Unfair to Boyle

Federal Judge Terrence Boyle was qualified to serve on a higher court. He was a victim of political expedience

Terrence Boyle has been a U.S. district judge in Eastern North Carolina since 1984. In that time, he has displayed a strict, no-nonsense style in the courtroom that hasn't pleased some lawyers, but has earned respect from others. His rulings have typically been well-contemplated and clearly written. He seems to have a fair mind and an even hand, and he has not always been predictable. At times, he's offended the conservatives who have been among his strongest advocates for a seat on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond -- the court that for North Carolinians is one step below the U.S. Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, President Bush has decided not to renominate Boyle for a position on that court, for which the judge had been nominated by the first President Bush, and then by the current one. The battle has been long and bruising to the judge, who has continued to do good work at the district level. (He lives in Edenton and often holds court in Elizabeth City and Raleigh.)

Boyle is a victim of the increasingly politicized judicial nominating and confirmation process. He became a target for some Democrats who lumped him in with hard ideologues who also were nominees and mounted strong opposition to him. That the nomination has been abandoned is no reflection on the judge's competence. The Bush administration failed to get him through when Republicans held a majority in the Senate. Now that they're in the minority, the White House clearly recognized Boyle's odds were only worse.

Whether Democrats will admit it or not, one of Boyle's sins in their minds was that he once worked for former Sen. Jesse Helms. In allowing that to influence their positions on Boyle, the Democrats were being petty and harshly partisan.

Perhaps it was payback for Helms having stood in the way of some nominations of more liberal judges under Democratic administrations, or his general view that there were too many federal judgeships, anyway. But that was no reason to "take out" a qualified jurist who would have added to the North Carolina contingent on the 4th Circuit. The state has been and still is underrepresented in those chambers.

It has been a long-standing custom in Washington that the sitting president gets to nominate and expects to confirm judges of the president's philosophical viewpoint, so long as they meet the customary professional standards for such an important post.

Under Democrats, that's meant a great many appointments of more liberal judges. Republicans in the past may not have liked some of those nominees in terms of their judicial views, but they typically confirmed them. The same has been true vice versa. But in recent years, judgeships have become part of the political battleground, and that's not healthy.

Certainly if a judge has been politically outspoken, or appears to cling to an ideology above all else, including the law as written, it's cause for alarm and yes, for rejection. But those who are qualified by education and experience and temperament to make the important constitutional decisions that federal judges have to make deserve confirmation. Terrence Boyle is one of those.