“There is no question that in terms of general credentials Estrada meets and well exceeds any reasonable qualifications, but his career has been marked by cases well outside mainstream American legal thought,” Vladeck said.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) announced its opposition to the appointment on Sept. 25, 2002.

“Mr. Estrada fails to meet the CHC’s evaluation criteria for endorsing judicial nominees,” Caucus Chair Silvestre Reynes said.

The Alliance for Justice, a private non-profit advocacy group whose mission for the last 20 years has been to uphold high standards for judicial nominees, has also expressed concern about the nomination.

Born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Estrada immigrated to the US with his family as a teenager.

He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree from Columbia in 1983.

Estrada graduated magna cum laude from HLS in 1986, where he edited the Harvard Law Review. From 1990 to 1992, he served as assistant U.S. attorney and Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of NY. In 1992, he joined the U.S. Department of Justice as an assistant to the Solicitor General.

“It would be very difficult to filibuster someone with his life story,” Vladeck said.

—Staff writer Ella A. Hoffman can be reached at hoffman@fas.harvard.edu

—Material from the Associated Press was used in the compilation of this story.