Norton Testifies at Confirmation Hearing for Florence Pan, First Female Asian American Pacific Islander for D.C. District Court Judge

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in favor of Judge Florence Pan’s nomination to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, as recommended by the Congresswoman to President Obama. She would be the first female Asian American Pacific Islander judge to serve on the U.S. district court here. Pan currently serves as an Associate Judge for the D.C. Superior Court.

“Florence Pan is an exceptional candidate with the professional experience, academic background, and leadership qualities that I am sure make her particularly well-suited for our district court,” Norton said. “I will make my best effort to see her confirmed by the committee and the full Senate.”

Since 2009, Pan has been an Associate Judge on the D.C. Superior Court, where she has served in the Family Courts and Criminal Division. Previously, she worked for 10 years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. She served five years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, working in both the federal and local trial courts here, and then in the appellate division, serving her last two years as the deputy chief of the division. Before that, Pan worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a senior advisor to the Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, where she worked on financial policy. Pan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude, with two undergraduate degrees, including from the Wharton School, and from Stanford Law School, with distinction, where she was an Associate Editor, Stanford Law Review, and student body president. She clerked for Judge Michael Mukasey, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, and Judge Ralph Winter, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. After her clerkships, Pan joined the U.S. Department of Justice, where she served as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General for a year and then as an attorney in the Criminal Division, Appellate Section. Pan has served as an adjunct professor of law at both the American University College of Law (2007-2008), where she taught criminal procedure, and since 2012 at the Georgetown University Law Center Law Center, where she teaches criminal procedure and constitutional law to L.L.M candidates.

President Obama, like President Clinton, granted Norton senatorial courtesy to recommend candidates for federal district court judges and other important federal law enforcement officials in the District. Norton recommended Pan from a number of candidates screened by her Federal Law Enforcement Nominating Commission, chaired by Pauline Schneider, a former president of the D.C. Bar. President Obama has nominated and the Senate has confirmed ten of Norton’s recommendations for district court judges—Amit Mehta, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Amy Berman Jackson, James E. Boasberg, Rudolph Contreras, Beryl A. Howell, Casey Cooper, Tanya Chutkan, Randolph Moss, and Robert Wilkins, who was the first of Norton’s recommendations to President Obama for a vacancy on the district court and who has since been elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.