Washington – Liberal groups say they consider Deanell Reece Tacha of Kansas, chief judge of the Denver-based 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, as a potential nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
Tacha, 59, was named to the federal bench by President Reagan in 1985. She first appeared on lists of possible Supreme Court nominees in 1996, when former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, a longtime supporter of the judge, won the Republican presidential nomination.
The judge’s name has again surfaced in legal and political circles now that O’Connor has announced her retirement, said Julie Bernstein, a spokeswoman for the Alliance for Justice. The liberal organization’s researchers have begun to probe Tacha’s record on the bench.
“We are beginning to look into her,” said Elliot Mincberg, vice president of People for the American Way, another liberal group that plays a prominent role in the judicial confirmation process. “She is known as a conservative judge. No question about that. We don’t know how conservative.”
Another 10th Circuit appeals judge, Michael McConnell of Utah, reportedly is ranked high on a White House list of potential Supreme Court nominees.
Tacha, a mother of four, is a popular legal and political figure in Kansas, viewed as conservative but not an ideologue. Her parents were Dole supporters and prominent Kansas Republicans.
The Goodland, Kan., native attended the University of Michigan law school and was a White House fellow in the Nixon administration before leaving to practice law in Concordia, Kan., in 1973.
Tacha also directed a Legal Aid clinic in Lawrence and then served as law professor and vice chancellor at the University of Kansas.
In 1996, the Legal Times newspaper said Tacha’s “background heartens moderates more than it does hard-liners.”
She has played marquee roles in several national legal groups, including the American Bar Association, the U.S. Judicial Conference and the U.S. Sentencing Commission, to which she was appointed by then-President Clinton.
Tacha wrote a 1996 opinion allowing churches to show religious films and distribute Bibles at Albuquerque senior centers.
She was part of a three-judge panel that same year that declined to review an Oklahoma court’s dismissal of a state ballot question criminalizing abortion.
She has upheld death sentences, but ruled for the rights of defendants in criminal cases.
John Aloysius Farrell can be reached at jfarrell@denverpost.com.
