Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Monday, September 23, 2013

 

Page 3

 

President Obama Nominates Judge Bashant to U.S. Court

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

President Obama has nominated San Diego Superior Court Judge Cynthia A. Bashant to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

Bashant was among eight potential district judges nominated by the president on Thursday.

Bashant has served on the San Diego Superior Court since 2000, handling both criminal and juvenile matters.  From 2009 to last year, she was the presiding judge for the juvenile dependency and delinquency courts. 

Prior to her appointment to the bench, Bashant served as an assistant United States attorney in the district, a post she held for 11 years. She practiced civil litigation as an associate with Baker & McKenzie in San Diego from 1988 to 1989 and with Macdonald Halsted & Laybourne in San Diego from 1986 to 1988.  

The nominee is a graduate of Hastings College of the Law and of Smith College.

The other nominees are Stanley Allen Bastian, a managing partner of the Wenatchee, Wash. law firm Jeffers, Danielson, Sonn & Aylward, to the District Court for the Eastern District of Washington; Maine Supreme Judicial Court Justice Jon David Levy for the District of Maine; and Manish Shah, an assistant U.S. attorney, for the Northern District of Illinois.

Shah received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University. The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association hailed his nomination in a statement noting that confirmation would make him “the first person of South Asian descent to serve as an Article III judge in the state of Illinois.”

In other news, the Blog of Legal Times reported Friday that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had agreed to support five potential Obama appointees to the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, including Rosemary Marquez, who was first nominated in 2011 but who McCain had previously opposed for undisclosed reasons.

 

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