OPINION:
Your editorial on Northern California federal district court nominee Edward Chen misses the point (“Another judicial radical,” Opinion, Oct. 25). He is tremendously qualified for the appointment, having graduated at the top of his class at the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law and distinguished himself for more than 20 years as a corporate litigation associate, American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney and federal magistrate.
The comments you attribute to him - his concern that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, might lead to anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States and his sadness that the promise of equality in patriotic songs is unfulfilled in American life - hardly make him a “biased radical willing to impose his own politics from the bench.” If anything, your willingness to discredit his nomination specifically (and solely) because he has championed the constitutional rights of Asian Americans points to your own reticence to a judiciary that reflects diversity and the promise of the Constitution.
MATTHEW WOOD
San Francisco
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