Background on Judge Dennis Shedd--Fourth Circuit Nominee

From the Know Your Judges department comes this op/ed piece authored by Erwin Chemerinsky, a visiting professor at Duke Law School. A snippet follows:

"At his Judiciary Committee hearing on June 27, Shedd admitted that a plaintiff has never won an employment discrimination jury trial in his court in his 11 years on the bench. Shedd tried to justify this by saying that discrimination suits never win in South Carolina. But this is just wrong. During Shedd's tenure on the federal bench, there have been at least 21 verdicts in favor of plaintiffs in other federal courts in South Carolina, totaling over $7 million in damages for plaintiffs.

Shedd consistently dismisses race and gender discrimination cases before trial, often overruling recommendations from magistrate judges to the contrary. Judge Shedd has heard 40 employment discrimination cases filed by African Americans and granted summary judgment in whole or in part, a win without even a trial, for the defendants in 39 of them."

Addendum: Judge Shedd was later confirmed on November 19, 2002.