Dem Senator Asks Judicial Nominee How The Peace Corps Impacted Her Life

5 months ago

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing held last week, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) spoke about how the Peace Corps impacted a judicial nominee.

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Transcript

00:00I have five minutes but I'll try to be a little tolerant on that given the number of folks

00:04who are here.

00:05Mr. Chairman, would you consider a second round?

00:10Not yet.

00:11Let's see how we do.

00:12So I'll start.

00:13Ms. Campbell, you graduated from college and joined the Peace Corps where you served for

00:18three years as a volunteer in Ecuador.

00:22That's a wonderful experience, I'm sure.

00:24Can you just describe to us, A, how you made the decision to join the Peace Corps and B,

00:29what that has done to affect you in your day-to-day work now?

00:37Senator, thank you for the opportunity to talk about a really wonderful experience in

00:44my life serving as a Peace Corps volunteer.

00:48I always knew that I wanted to go to law school.

00:52I thought that I didn't want to go straight through to law school, I wanted to take some

00:56time off and that was an opportunity that seemed interesting to me.

01:05On the backside now, I can tell you that it was an experience that had an incredible impact

01:11on my life.

01:13Living in a place and seeing firsthand how lucky I am to live in a country and practice

01:21law in a country where we have a functioning judiciary and a constitutional system, something

01:29that we are so lucky to have that others do not have.

01:32A lot of your work has been complex litigation at the appellate level.

01:36Can you talk about that and how that's going to inform you, should you be confirmed to

01:41serve in this position?

01:43Senator, I have had a pretty broad range of appellate experience, mostly at the Sixth

01:51Circuit but in the other Federal Circuits, some of the other Federal Circuits as well.

01:55I am largely an ERISA practitioner and I often appear before panels.

02:04Not a lot of people practice ERISA, it's a niche area and have the experience of really

02:11engaging in productive debate and back and forth with the panels.

02:18Certainly that has informed my idea of how I would be if I were fortunate enough to be

02:24confirmed, civility and engagement with the litigants before me.

02:30Thank you.

02:31Judge Lopez, as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Maine for over a decade, you prosecuted

02:36a range of crimes and some of the ones are the horrible crimes of sex trafficking and

02:42sexual exploitation of children.

02:46Could you explain to the committee how it was you were drawn to that work and what you

02:50learned from it?

02:54Thank you, Senator, for that question and for the opportunity to speak about something

02:58that I am truly passionate about.

03:01I did have the privilege to serve my community as an Assistant United States Attorney for

03:06more than a decade.

03:08When given the opportunity to serve as the Human Trafficking Coordinator for the office,

03:12I jumped at that opportunity.

03:13I became a prosecutor in part because I did want to help protect the community and those

03:19who are victimized by sex traffickers are some of the most vulnerable in our community,

03:26young women and children who are exploited and forced into commercial sexual activity.

03:33In that role, I worked with an extraordinary team, including some of the most dedicated

03:39and talented law enforcement agents one could ever meet, and together we were able to hold

03:46to account those who do exploit the most vulnerable among us.

03:51It's work that I'm very proud of.

03:54The last thing, one of the last things I did, in fact, before I left the U.S. Attorney's

03:57Office was co-author an article for federal prosecutors nationwide on how to build a successful

04:04human trafficking practice, and my hope is that that will serve as a useful guide for

04:08others who would like to do that important work.

04:10Thank you.

04:11And then, so you went from an advocate or prosecutor to serving as a superior judge

04:17and now potentially appellate court judge.

04:20Tell us about your superior court judge experience and how you see that as making you a better

04:26appellate judge.

04:28Thank you, Senator.

04:30As a member of the Maine Superior Court, I preside over a wide range of civil and criminal

04:35matters, including by conducting jury trials.

04:38The Maine Superior Court also has jurisdiction over a variety of appeals, including appeals

04:43from Maine administrative agencies, and those appeals often present complex statutory and

04:48constitutional questions.

04:50And so I do believe the work has given me a broad skill set that would be useful if

04:56I'm fortunate enough to be confirmed to the First Circuit.

05:00As a trial court judge, I'm also acutely aware that the work we judges do impacts people's

05:06daily lives, and so if I were fortunate enough to be confirmed as an appellate judge, I would

05:11always keep that in mind, that there are real-world consequences to the work that we do.

05:15Thank you very much.

05:17And I'll now recognize Senator Graham for five minutes.

05:19Thank you very much.

05:21I would recommend that

Dem Senator Asks Judicial Nominee How The Peace Corps Impacted Her Life

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