A President Joe Biden nominee for U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Washington said she didn't know basic questions about constitutional law when quizzed in a confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
When Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., got his turn, he asked Spokane County Superior Court Judge Charnelle Bjelkengren about two articles of America's founding document.
Things got off to a bad start when Kennedy said: "Tell me what Article V of the Constitution does."
"Article V is not coming to mind at the moment," Bjelkengren said.
"How about Article II?" Kennedy responded.
That didn't come to mind for her either, she said.
Article V describes the process of amending the Constitution, and Article II explains the executive powers of the U.S. president.
Kennedy next asked Bjelkengren whether she knew about "purposivism." Purposivism is a method of interpreting statutory law that "maintains that the legal effect of a statute should be determined by the objective purpose of the statute," according to Legal Theory Blog.
She said she also was unfamiliar with that concept.
But, Bjelkengren, replied, "In my 12 years as an assistant attorney general, in my nine years as a judge, I was not faced with that precise question. We are the highest trial court in Washington state, so I'm frequently faced with issues that I'm not familiar with, and I thoroughly review the law, I research and apply the law to the facts presented to me."
"Well, you're going to be faced with it as a — if you're confirmed. I can assure you of that," Kennedy told her.
NBC News, which first reported the story, noted that Bjelkengren's inability to answer Kennedy's questions may not tank her chances at confirmation now that Democrats have a 51-seat majority in the Senate.
Still, the case is reminiscent of Kennedy's tough questioning spiking one of President Donald Trump's nominees.
When lawyer and former Federal Election Commission Chairman Matthew Petersen was nominated by Trump to serve on the U.S. District Court for D.C. in 2017, Petersen ended up withdrawing following an embarrassing exchange with Kennedy.
"Some of these nominees that have been forced in the last two years have no business being anywhere near a federal bench — they don't have any business being anywhere near a park bench," Kennedy told NBC. "I don't ask the nominees, 'Do you support this precedent or you support that precedent?' I asked them to tell me about the law, tell me what the Constitution says, tell me about the relationship between the federal judiciary and our administrative agencies. These are all very basic questions."
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