May 13 (Bloomberg) -- Appeals court nominees Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown will be the focus of the U.S. Senate's debate over Democrats' power to block President George W. Bush's judicial appointments, Republican leader Bill Frist said today.

After the Senate completes action on a highway construction bill, probably on May 18, Frist said he will call up the two nominations. Owen and Brown are among seven nominees Democrats have blocked in the past and have threatened to stop again.

Frist said he will seek a rule change on judicial appointments to abolish the use of the filibuster, the parliamentary tactic that permits unlimited debate, if he can't get an agreement from Democratic leader Harry Reid to allow Senate votes on all seven disputed judicial nominees.

``It is time for 100 Senators to decide the issue of fair up- or-down votes for judicial nominees after over two years of unprecedented obstructionism,'' Frist said in a statement.

Frist has said he would seek a ruling from the Senate chair, the presiding officer at that moment, that unlimited debate on judicial nominees is out of order.

Democrats have threatened to bring Senate business to a crawl if the rules are changed. Frist has said he needs a simple majority in the 100-member Senate to declare the filibuster out of order. Democrats say it requires 67 votes to change the Senate rule that allows unlimited debate.

Nominees Blocked

Democrats blocked votes on 10 of Bush's judicial nominees during the president's first term, arguing they would let their political ideology guide their decisions.

Bush resubmitted seven of them in February, including Owen, a Texas Supreme Court justice, and Brown, who is on the California Supreme Court. Earlier this week, the president urged the Senate in a statement to give his nominees ``prompt'' consideration.

Owen, whom Democrats argue injected her personal opposition to abortion into decisions about teen-age girls seeking to terminate pregnancies, is nominated to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Brown, who characterized the New Deal as the ``triumph of our socialist revolution,'' is nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

It is unclear whether Frist has the votes to change the filibuster rules. Two Republicans, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and John McCain of Arizona, have said they would vote to preserve the judicial filibuster. Several other Republicans, including Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, John Warner of Virginia, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Maine senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, have voiced concern about changing the rule.

Frist needs 50 votes to change the rule. If the Senate were deadlocked 50-50, Vice President Dick Cheney has said he would cast a tie-breaking vote to change the rule.

Filibuster History

Republicans argue that Democrats abused the filibuster against Bush's nominees, noting that it had only been used against 17 other judicial candidates in the Senate's history. None of those nominees was blocked by the filibuster, Republicans argue.

Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas withdrew as a nominee to be chief justice of the U.S. in the face of a bipartisan filibuster, Republicans said.

Democrats, in turn, argue that Republicans used different tactics to deny more than 60 of President Bill Clinton's nominees either a Senate vote or a hearing before the Judiciary Committee.

Two other disputed nominees have been sent by the committee to the full Senate: William G. Myers III and William H. Pryor Jr., who was given a temporary appointment to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

New Advertisements

Pro-Republican and pro-Democratic groups have paid for television advertisements to try to influence undecided Republican senators. People for the American Way Foundation, which supports the Democrats' fight to preserve the filibuster, said it would begin airing new ads in Pennsylvania, Maine and Alaska.

The ads are designed to urge undecided senators to vote against what lawmakers have dubbed ``the nuclear option'' eliminating judicial filibusters, the group said in an e-mailed statement.

``The nuclear option vote will define the future of the Senate and the future of representative democracy,'' Ralph Neas, the group's president, said in the statement. ``It will also define these senators as they decide the most important institutional vote in the history of the Senate.''

To contact the reporter on this story: James Rowley in Washington at jarowley@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 13, 2005 17:41 EDT