Daniel Gluck’s nomination to the state Intermediate Court of Appeals is scheduled to be voted on today before the Senate Judiciary Committee following more than four hours of disparate testimony Tuesday on Gluck’s relative lack of court experience, his status as a mainland-born transplant and the lack of diversity on Hawaii’s high courts.
Even some critics of Gov. David Ige’s nomination of Gluck praised Gluck’s character, integrity, work ethic and legal mind. But there was also passionate testimony in opposition, including from people — sometimes female lawyers of color — about ongoing issues of oppression, inequity and disenfranchisement in Hawaii’s highest courts and legal community.
No matter how the Judiciary Committee votes today, Gluck’s nomination is scheduled to go before the full Senate on Thursday morning for confirmation or not.
Several critics of Gluck’s nomination Tuesday urged him to withdraw or called upon Ige to withdraw the nomination and nominate someone else, particular one of the women of color who have much more case experience than Gluck before both the Intermediate Court of Appeals and Hawaii Supreme Court whose names also were sent to Ige by the state Judicial Selection Committee.
Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, vice chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said some of the other people Ige considered for the Intermediate Court of Appeals have more experience than Gluck “by orders of magnitude.”
Gluck was raised in Buffalo, N.Y., and received his Bachelor of Science degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2003 and previously served as legal director of the ACLU of Hawaii and is currently executive director/general counsel for the state Ethics Commission.
“I’ve been saying for weeks that I wouldn’t be the one selected, not because I’m not qualified — I am qualified — but because I shared the list with five phenomenal people,” Gluck told the Judiciary Committee in more than an hour of his own testimony. “Their credentials are impressive. Their credentials don’t make me unqualified.”
Under repeated questioning from Keohokalole, who traces his ancestry back generations on the Windward side, Gluck said:
“I hear, and have heard for the whole time that I’ve been fortunate to live here, the passion and the pain and the need for better representation and diversity at all levels of state government. … These are really valid arguments that we should be having as a community to try to address historic injustice and ongoing systemic racism. … I am never going to have the same experience as someone who either was born here or someone who is Native Hawaiian.”
Gluck’s nomination was supported by an impressive list of heavyweights in Hawaii’s legal community, including retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Steven Levinson, Chief U.S. District Court Judge J. Michael Seabright and state Attorney General Clare Connors, who went to law school with Gluck.
State Sen. Joy San Buenaventura, a criminal defense attorney, previously told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that Gluck lacked proper court experience to sit on the ICA and that she planned to vote against his nomination.
On Tuesday she told Gluck “that I really do agree that you are very sincere about your intent to help the downtrodden.”
Later Buenaventura told Gluck, “If you really do truly believe in diversity and historic biases — and, really, the symbol of your nomination being shown here by the community as a symbol of the intrinsic bias of this governor in only appointing women of color to lower courts and not to higher courts — shouldn’t you withdraw your nomination?”
Gluck did not directly respond, but said, “I don’t believe it’s my decision to make right now,” but is in the hands of the Senate.
