LSC Board Nominees Make it Through Senate Committee

The Legal Services Corporation has announced that three board nominations, made by President Obama last December, were approved by the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

The three nominees are Sharon L. Browne, a principal attorney in the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Individual Rights Practice group and a member of the foundation’s senior management; Charles Norman Wiltse Keckler, who teaches civil procedure and evidence at Pennsylvania State University’s Dickinson School of Law, and Victor B. Maddox, a partner in the Louisville, Ky., law firm of Fultz Maddox Hovious & Dickens, PLC.

They join five other LSC Board nominees, announced August 6, 2009, awaiting Senate confirmation. They are Robert J. Grey, a partner in the Richmond, Va., and Washington offices of the Hunton & Williams law firm; John G. Levi, a partner in the Chicago office of Sidley Austin, LLP; Martha L. Minow, dean of the Harvard Law School; Julie A. Reiskin, executive director of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, and Gloria Valencia-Weber, a professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law.

Ms. Browne’s nomination had stirred controversy in some legal services circles because of her and her employer’s positions on issues which were seen as antithetical to the legal services mission.  We documented opposition to her nomination from the National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA) and others in a previous post.