CIT Judge Nominees Face Questions From Senate Judiciary Committee
President Joe Biden's two nominees to fill vacancies at the Court of International Trade, Schagrin Associates' Joseph Laroski and the Commerce Department's Lisa Wang (see 2307120021), went before the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing on July 26. The two nominees faced questioning from the senators, including inquiries into their backgrounds and how their past experiences will shape their decision-making on the bench.
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Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., asked Laroski how he would manage the transition from working as an advocate, seeing as he currently is a partner at a firm representing domestic industry players, to being a neutral judge. Laroski said that his 25 years of experience as an advocate have been "really formative and will certainly inform my understanding of the law," adding that he's "wrestled with" trade laws from every perspective, including foreign producers', importers' and government agencies' as well. He noted that he also would draw from his experience as a former Commerce official.
When asked a similar question, Wang said that her time working at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing was especially formative. Defending the government's position in countervailing duty cases brought by China against the U.S., the assistant commerce secretary said that the importance of the rule of law in the international trading system became apparent to her.
Further responding to a question from Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., on her background, Wang added that her qualifications to be a judge are evident in her trade litigation experience. "For example, while at the U.S. Trade Representative, I defended the United States' sovereign ability for the concurrent application of antidumping and countervailing duties to non-market economy countries like China," she said. "In my current role as the assistant secretary of commerce, I am the sole decision-maker for 667 tariff duty orders and thousands of tariff proceedings that stem from them."
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, took the hearing in a different direction for Wang, asking the Commerce official about comments she made as an undergraduate at Cornell University. During this time, Wang said that "one of the things I run into in America is that people pay lip service to liberal causes, but still have deeply rooted prejudices." Lee asked if it was fair to say that this is what she sees as leftist hypocrisy.
Wang responded by saying these comments were made with regard to the anti-Asian hate crimes in an effort to open a dialogue with the school's administration on the fact that these crimes were occurring. Lee followed up by asking whether Asian discrimination in college admissions is an example of the type of issue Wang was referring to in her remarks. To this, Wang said that her personal views are "irrelevant" to her current standing before the committee as a judge since she would be a "neutral arbiter applying precedent and the text of the statute."