Charles W. Pickering

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Charles Willis Pickering, Sr. (born May 29, 1937) is a retired American judge.

He received a B.A. from the University of Mississippi in 1959, and an LL.B. also from the University of Mississippi in 1961.

He is married to Margaret Ann Pickering, with whom he has three daughters and one son, U.S. Representative Charles "Chip" Pickering, Jr.

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[edit] Career

Pickering was active in the Democratic Party of the State of Mississippi in the early 1960s, but switched to the Mississippi Republican Party in 1964. He claimed at the time that "the people of [Mississippi] were heaped with humiliation and embarrassment at the Democratic Convention" in Atlantic City after the national Democratic Party seated two civil rights activists from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party with the all-white delegation Pickering supported. Pickering, along with other disaffected racially conservative Democrats, played a key role in building the Republican Party in Mississippi in the following years.[1]

Judge Pickering was appointed and served as City Prosecuting Attorney of Laurel, Mississippi and was elected and served four years as County Prosecuting Attorney of Jones County, Mississippi. He served briefly as Laurel City Judge, 1969, and was elected to two terms in the Mississippi Senate, 1972 to 1980. In 1979, Pickering was the Republican nominee for state Attorney General and lost by a narrow margin. He and also served as Chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party from 1976 to 1978.

In 1976, Judge Pickering chaired the subcommittee of the Republican Party's Platform Committee that called for a Constitutional amendment that would have overruled Roe v. Wade.

In 1984, when Judge Pickering was the president of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, he presided over a meeting where the Convention adopted a resolution calling for legislation to outlaw abortion except when necessary to preserve a woman's life.

Charles W. Pickering, Sr. was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi on October 2, 1990 by President of the United States George H. W. Bush.

[edit] Unsuccessful Nomination to the Court of Appeals

President George W. Bush nominated Pickering for a judgeship on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 2002, but his nomination was not acted upon favorably by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Nevertheless, on January 7, 2003, President Bush renominated Pickering to the same position. Senate Republicans failed to overcome a filibuster of Judge Charles Pickering's promotion to the federal appeals court on October 30, 2003. On January 16, 2004, while the U.S. Senate was in recess, Judge Pickering was given a recess appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit by President George W. Bush. Appointments such at this, bypassing confirmation, are only valid until the adjournment of the next session of Congress, in this case on December 8, 2004.

Judge Pickering had two hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. At both hearings, he maintained his current position opposing abortion.

In December 2004, Pickering announced that he was withdrawing his name from consideration as a nominee to the Fifth Circuit and retiring from the federal bench.

Groups that had opposed Pickering's confirmation to the Court of Appeals included: the national and Mississippi chapters of the NAACP, the Legislative Black Caucus, the Magnolia Bar Association, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Mississippi Worker’s Center for Human Rights, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Alliance for Justice, the Human Rights Campaign, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the National Bar Association, the American Association of University Women, the National Women’s Law Center, the National Partnership for Women and Families, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Women's Political Caucus, the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of School Administrators, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, the United Steelworkers of America and others.

However, Pickering's nomination was supported by several past leaders of the NAACP in Mississippi. One of his strongest supporters was Charles Evers, brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

[edit] Notes

1 Crespino, Joseph. 2007. In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p.103.

[edit] References

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[edit] External links

Legal offices
Preceded by
Henry Anthony Politz		 Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
2004		 Succeeded by
Leslie H. Southwick