Ellington

Newly confirmed Federal District Judge Carlton Reeves will keep his politics to himself, legal observers predict. Yesterday, the U.S. Senate confirmed the former Magnolia Bar president to serve as a Southern District Court judge in Mississippi, eight months after President Barack Obama appointed him.

Brad Pigott, Reeves' partner at Pigott Reeves Johnson law firm, said he had confidence that Reeves will be a refreshing alternative to an increasingly politicized court system.

"I think he's capable of avoiding politics," said Pigott, a former U.S. attorney under President Bill Clinton. "He respects neutral judging and neutral expressions of the law, even at a time when it's becoming apparently conventional on the U.S. Supreme Court to have a political agenda. I think he understands that that ought to be avoided, even if four or five people on the Supreme Court seem to have very right-wing partisan agenda. I think he understands that's not the right thing to do."

Legal commentator and Jackson attorney Phillip Thomas said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is influencing the national and state court system by funding the campaigns of judicial candidates who issue defendant-friendly decisions. Thomas said the Southern District Court is currently independent of the Chamber, however.

"The Chambers' influence on the judiciary nationally is really scary, but I don't think it's as big of a problem in the Southern District Court of Mississippi as it is on the Mississippi Supreme Court or the Mississippi Appellate Court. I don't really hear that many complaints about the southern district judges making pro-business decisions that are completely out in left field," Thomas said. "(Supreme Court judges) have to run for elections and the Chamber pumps so much money into the elections that the judges have to worry about raising funds for their own next elections and being pro-business enough in their decisions that the Chamber doesn't fund some opponent."

The judge earned his bachelor's degree in political science from Jackson State University in 1986, and his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1989. Since that time, he has served as an assistant United States attorney under Pigott and as a member of the Civil Chiefs Working Group of the U.S. Department of Justice. Reeves also served as a special master of Hinds County Chancery Court where he oversaw litigation.

Reeves has worked with a number of arguably liberal groups, including the ACLU and the Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights, where he served as a board member. Reeves also served on the board of the Mississippi Center for Justice, and as president of the Magnolia Bar Association, a statewide organization of black attorneys, from 2007 to 2008.

Reeves advocated for more black attorney appointments to state judgeships in 2009, and criticized Gov. Haley Barbour for appointing no blacks to judicial positions since becoming governor in 2003. Barbour has since made two African American appointments for more than 20 positions.

Pigott said he was pleased that Mississippi's Republican Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran voted in favor Reeve's appointment.

"I wasn't all that surprised. I was grateful, but not all that surprised, they supported him," said Pigott said. "As for us, we've been reluctantly at (making) peace with losing him (as a partner) during the many month of his nomination."