Confirmation Needed
The Senate should allow the Justice Department to fill its No. 2 post.

Monday, February 25, 2008

ON ITS RETURN this week, the Senate should act quickly to confirm Mark R. Filip as deputy attorney general. This No. 2 job at the Justice Department essentially functions as the chief operating officer of the mammoth department; it has been without a confirmed nominee since Paul J. McNulty left last summer.

There's plenty of blame to go around for the delay. Mr. Filip, a highly regarded judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, was nominated in mid-November by President Bush, although the nomination wasn't officially forwarded to the Senate until early December. The Senate Judiciary Committee acted admirably by quickly holding a hearing for Mr. Filip on Dec. 19, but the nomination wasn't voted favorably out of committee until Jan. 31.

The matter has been stalled since then, with little justification. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) put a hold on the nomination Feb. 5; although he spoke admiringly of his home-state federal judge, Mr. Durbin used the hold as leverage to get answers from Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey about the administration's legal position on waterboarding. Mr. Durbin lifted the hold just two days later, after receiving Mr. Mukasey's response, but the full Senate failed to vote on the nomination before leaving Feb. 15 for a week-long recess.

It is notoriously difficult to persuade qualified people to take jobs late in a lame-duck administration. Yet Mr. Filip has agreed to give up a lifetime tenure on the federal bench to tackle the often-thankless task of managing the Justice Department's workforce of 110,000. Since his nomination, he has continued to hear cases but has recused himself from presiding over criminal matters because of the involvement of Justice Department prosecutors. Back in Washington, the lack of a confirmed nominee in the deputy's post often inhibits the department from acting decisively on high-level personnel matters, which in turn can hinder resolution of important policy issues.

Senators rightly complained about shoddy management and undue political influence in the department during the tenure of now-departed Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. They will further the cause of good management and good policies by confirming Mr. Filip as quickly as possible.