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Karen J. Williams

Age: 54

Graduated from: University of South Carolina Law Center

She used to be: A lawyer in private practice in Orangeburg, S.C.

She's now: a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit (appointed 1992)

Her confirmation battle:

Williams is a solid conservative without a smoking-gun abortion decision to her credit or debit. She came to the attention of the right when she wrote a decision in 1999 scrapping the Miranda warning for criminal suspects (the Supreme Court reversed her 7 to 2). Since then, she has urged the courts to show broad deference to the president's war powers and rejected the notion that the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance means that the pledge shouldn't be recited in public school. Both stances are sure to please Bush's base. Not much here for anyone else.

Civil rights and civil liberties

In a 2004 appeal in the case of Zacharias Moussaoui, allegedly the 20th Sept. 11 hijacker, Williams dissented from a ruling giving the trial court the power to order the government to produce witnesses to testify on Moussaoui's behalf. The majority held that Moussaoui's right to a fair trial outweighed the government's interest in withholding the witnesses to protect national security. Williams' dissent said this approach prevents "the Executive from accomplishing its war-making, military, and foreign relations duties."

Over a dissent, in 2005 she rejected the asylum petition of a Chinese woman who said her government had required her to insert an IUD after she had a child without permission. Williams emphasized that the woman had left the IUD in place while in the United States, though the woman testified she had done so for fear that the Chinese authorities would punish her for removing it were she to return. Williams also distinguished between "insertion" of the IUD, which did not involve physical abuse, and "compelled IUD usage." The latter might rise to the level of persecution, she wrote. But because the woman (who did not have a lawyer) didn't directly raise IUD use in her petition, it was irrelevant to the court's decision.

In 1998, Williams dissented from a decision affirming a $60,000 jury award for a prisoner who suffered permanent damage to his jaw after his prison doctor did not make sure that he got follow-up treatment. Williams acknowledged that the doctor could have given instructions that the prisoner needed to go to an oral surgery clinic outside the prison as soon as possible. But it was reasonable that he didn't do so, she argued, because other prison doctors testified that they had been discouraged from calling the clinic.

Separation of church and state

In 2005, Williams voted to reject a 2005 challenge to the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools by a father who objected to the phrase "under God." Williams said that the pledge is a patriotic exercise, not a prayer. She also relied on "the history surrounding our nation's founding," noting references to God in the Declaration of Independence and by the Constitution's framers.

Criminal Law

In 1999, Williams attacked the Miranda warning. Miranda v. Arizona is the storied 1966 decision of the Warren Court that requires the police to read criminal suspects their rights. ("You have the right to remain silent ...") If the police screw up Miranda, a suspect's confession often gets thrown out of court. Two years after the Supreme Court made Miranda warnings the law of the land, Congress passed a statute expressly to get rid of them. (The law said that a confession would be admitted into court "if it is voluntarily given" and gave trial judges the job of making case-by-case calls about voluntariness.) But over the next 30 years, the Department of Justice never tried to use the law to prosecute a criminal case. In 1998, Miranda critic Paul Cassell filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Fourth Circuit to recognize Congress' power to override the 1966 decision. Williams took the bait.

Over a dissent, she ruled for herself and a second judge that Congress had the authority to get rid of Miranda because the warnings were not required by the Constitution. The third judge on the appellate panel pointed out in dissent that Williams wrote her opinion without any briefing in opposition, saying "the majority takes on more than any court should." The Supreme Court reversed Williams' ruling 7 to 2, with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in dissent.

Free Speech

Williams voted in 2002 to strike down a Virginia law that prevented the Sons of Confederate Veterans from putting the Confederate flag on the group's customized license plates. Williams said the license plates were private rather than government speech.* In singling out the SCV by exercising special editorial control over the plates, she wrote, the state was discriminating against the group based on its viewpoint.

Habeas Corpus

Over a dissent, Williams in 2003 wrote an opinion for a majority of the Fourth Circuit rejecting the habeas petition of an inmate who filed his appeal one day late because of an error by his lawyer. She said the fact that the inmate was on death row was irrelevant to whether his late petition should be heard. She found that there were no extraordinary circumstances beyond the inmate's control that prevented him from filing on time.

http://www.slate.com/id/2127241/