Paul M. Collins, Jr.

Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science / Director of Legal Studies University of Massachusetts Amherst

  • Amherst MA

Paul Collins' research focuses on bias and inequality in the legal system, the selection and work of judges and social movement litigation.

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Emil Bove’s appeals court nomination echoes earlier controversies, but with a key difference

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here. President Donald Trump’s nomination of his former criminal defense attorney, Emil Bove, to be a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, has been mired in controversy. On June 24, 2025, Erez Reuveni, a former Department of Justice attorney who worked with Bove, released an extensive, 27-page whistleblower report. Reuveni claimed that Bove, as the Trump administration’s acting deputy attorney general, said “that it might become necessary to tell a court ‘fuck you’” and ignore court orders related to the administration’s immigration policies. Bove’s acting role ended on March 6 when he resumed his current position of principal associate deputy attorney general. When asked about this statement at his June 25 Senate confirmation hearing, Bove said, “I don’t recall.” And on July 15, 80 former federal and state judges signed a letter opposing Bove’s nomination. The letter argued that “Mr. Bove’s egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power, and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position.” A day later, more than 900 former Department of Justice attorneys submitted their own letter opposing Bove’s confirmation. The attorneys argued that “Few actions could undermine the rule of law more than a senior executive branch official flouting another branch’s authority. But that is exactly what Mr. Bove allegedly did through his involvement in DOJ’s defiance of court orders.” On July 17, Democrats walked out of the Senate Judiciary Committee vote, in protest of the refusal by Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, to allow further investigation and debate on the nomination. Republicans on the committee then unanimously voted to move the nomination forward for a full Senate vote. As a scholar of the courts, I know that most federal court appointments are not as controversial as Bove’s nomination. But highly contentious nominations do arise from time to time. Here’s how three controversial nominations turned out – and how Bove’s nomination is different in a crucial way. Robert Bork Bork is the only federal court nominee whose name became a verb. “Borking” is “to attack or defeat (a nominee or candidate for public office) unfairly through an organized campaign of harsh public criticism or vilification,” according to Merriam-Webster. This refers to Republican President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 appointment of Bork to the Supreme Court. Reagan called Bork “one of the finest judges in America’s history.” Democrats viewed Bork, a federal appeals court judge, as an ideologically extreme conservative, with their opposition based largely on his extensive scholarly work and opinions on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In opposing the Bork nomination, Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts took the Senate floor and gave a fiery speech: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.” Ultimately, Bork’s nomination failed by a 58-42 vote in the Senate, with 52 Democrats and six Republicans rejecting the nomination. Ronnie White In 1997, Democratic President Bill Clinton nominated White to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. White was the first Black judge on the Missouri Supreme Court. Republican Sen. John Ashcroft, from White’s home state of Missouri, led the fight against the nomination. Ashcroft alleged that White’s confirmation would “push the law in a pro-criminal direction.” Ashcroft based this claim on White’s comparatively liberal record in death penalty cases as a judge on the Missouri Supreme Court. However, there was limited evidence to support this assertion. This led some to believe that Ashcroft’s attack on the nomination was motivated by stereotypes that African Americans, like White, are soft on crime. Even Clinton implied that race may be a factor in the attacks on White: “By voting down the first African-American judge to serve on the Missouri Supreme Court, the Republicans have deprived both the judiciary and the people of Missouri of an excellent, fair, and impartial Federal judge.” White’s nomination was defeated in the Senate by a 54-45 party-line vote. In 2014, White was renominated to the same judgeship by President Barack Obama and confirmed by largely party-line 53-44 vote, garnering the support of a single Republican, Susan Collins of Maine. Miguel Estrada Republican President George W. Bush nominated Estrada to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2001. Estrada, who had earned a unanimous “well-qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, faced deep opposition from Senate Democrats, who believed he was a conservative ideologue. They also worried that, if confirmed, he would later be appointed to the Supreme Court. However, unlike Bork – who had an extensive paper trail as an academic and judge – Estrada’s written record was very thin. Democrats sought to use his confirmation hearing to probe his beliefs. But they didn’t get very far, as Estrada dodged many of the senators’ questions, including ones about Supreme Court cases he disagreed with and judges he admired. Democrats were particularly troubled by allegations that Estrada, when he was screening candidates for Justice Anthony Kennedy, disqualified applicants for Supreme Court clerkships based on their ideology. According to one attorney: “Miguel told me his job was to prevent liberal clerks from being hired. He told me he was screening out liberals because a liberal clerk had influenced Justice Kennedy to side with the majority and write a pro-gay-rights decision in a case known as Romer v. Evans, which struck down a Colorado statute that discriminated against gays and lesbians.” When asked about this at his confirmation hearing, Estrada initially denied it but later backpedaled. Estrada said, “There is a set of circumstances in which I would consider ideology if I think that the person has some extreme view that he would not be willing to set aside in service to Justice Kennedy.” Unlike the Bork nomination, Democrats didn’t have the numbers to vote Estrada’s nomination down. Instead, they successfully filibustered the nomination, knowing that Republicans couldn’t muster the required 60 votes to end the filibuster. This marked the first time in Senate history that a court of appeals nomination was filibustered. Estrada would never serve as a judge. Bove stands out As the examples of Bork, Estrada and White make clear, contentious nominations to the federal courts often involve ideological concerns. This is also true for Bove, who is opposed in part because of the perception that he is a conservative ideologue. But the main concerns about Bove are related to a belief that he is a Trump loyalist who shows little respect for the rule of law or the judicial branch. This makes Bove stand out among contentious federal court nominations.

Paul M. Collins, Jr.

Expertise

Bias in Judicial Appointments
Judicial Appointments
Public Law
Inequality in the Legal System
American Politics
Judicial Ethics
Judicial Elections
Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

Biography

Paul M. Collins investigates the factors that shape the selection and decision-making process of U.S. Supreme Court justices and interest group litigation.

His research and commentary have appeared in a host of popular media outlets, including CNN, the National Law Journal, National Public Radio, The New York Times, New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. He has also authored articles in SCOTUSblog, Slate, The Conversation, The New York Daily News and the Washington Post.

Collins has been awarded twice with the C. Herman Pritchett Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association. The awards recognized Collins’ 2023 book “Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings” and his 2019 book, “Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making.”

Social Media

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Education

Binghamton University (SUNY)

Ph.D.

Political Science

Binghamton University (SUNY)

M.A.

Political Science

University of Scranton.

B.S.

Political Science

Select Recent Media Coverage

Trump defies US Constitution: From ending birthright citizenship to pardoning Capitol rioters

EL PAÍS  online

2025-01-22

Paul M. Collins Jr. comments about President Donald Trump’s actions during the early days of his second term, including an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. “The idea that a president is authorized to unilaterally reinterpret an amendment [to the U.S. Constitution] is a crazy legal theory,” Collins says. “I think the courts will ultimately reject it, but I would not be surprised if some of Trump’s first-term justices support it.”

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Can John Roberts Survive a Trump Presidency?

Newsweek  online

2024-11-04

Paul Collins says that if former President Donald Trump wins the presidential election, it’s likely his administration will pressure Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to retire and enable Trump to nominate a more conservative justice.

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What would an impeachment of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice look

KNX News Podcast  online

2024-05-23

Paul Collins, professor of legal studies at UMass Amherst, discusses what impeaching a Supreme Court justice might look like. “You need to have a majority in the House of Representatives move for impeachment and then that would get transferred to the Senate, and it would take two-thirds of the Senate to actually remove a judge or a Supreme Court Justice from office,” he explains.

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Joe Biden leaves a complicated legacy on the federal courts

The Conversation

Paul M. Collins Jr.

2025-01-16

"As a leading scholar of the federal courts, I believe Biden’s judicial impact is most notable in three regards: his role in the 1991 confirmation of Clarence Thomas, his historic efforts during his presidency to diversify the federal bench, and his 2024 decision to veto legislation expanding the number of federal district court judgeships."

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What to expect from federal judges appointed by Trump or Harris − based on what we’ve seen from Trump and Biden picks for the Supreme Court and lower courts

The Conversation

Paul M. Collins, Jr.

2024-10-03

Paul Collins writes about the judicial nominations of the Trump-Pence and Biden-Harris administrations. “The Trump-Pence administration emphasized the selection of very conservative jurists with deep ties to the conservative legal movement. In contrast, the Biden-Harris administration sought to diversify the federal bench, making it more closely reflect the America it represents,” Collins writes.

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Donald Trump picks his targets carefully and seeks to undermine their legitimacy. AP Photo/Alex Brandon Trump pushes the limits of every restriction he faces

The Conversation

Paul M. Collins, Jr.

2023-04-10

Paul Collins, professor of legal studies and political science at UMass Amherst, writes that former President Donald Trump’s social media posts attacking the daughter of the judge presiding over his criminal trial in New York state are “just the latest in his long effort to undermine the rule of law.”

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