MINNESOTA
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Pam Louwagie and Rob Hotakainen
Last update: November 17, 2005 at 11:40 PM
A University of St. Thomas law professor who once clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is the president's probable pick for a federal judgeship in Minnesota, according to a source familiar with the nomination process.
Patrick J. Schiltz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is going through FBI background checks before his name is nominated to the Senate for confirmation, the source said. A separate source on Capitol Hill said that the FBI has contacted his office to make inquiries about Schiltz and that no inquiries were made about other candidates.
Schiltz declined to comment Thursday. A spokesman for Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said the senator's office doesn't comment on such matters. Senators of the same political party as the president typically recommend appointments for federal judgeships.
It is unclear when the background checks would be completed. The judgeship opened after U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle took senior status last spring. ...
He represented religious organizations in more than 500 clergy sex abuse cases.
He wrote articles that, while condemning clergy abuse, said recent media attention was misdirected because most cases were more than 10 years old and most Catholic dioceses had cleaned up their acts by the early 1990s.
In an article in the national Catholic weekly America, he wrote that the church had a moral obligation to compensate victims of clergy abuse fairly, but suggested it be done in an alternative system to the courtroom. When the church pays, he wrote in another article, the people who pay are the people in the pews or those whom the church serves.