A Respected Law-and-Order Man With a Compassionate Streak

Charged with conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks, Earl Gant was hardly a sympathetic defendant. But when he appeared before federal Judge Michael Mukasey seeking bail in 1993, the young Muslim argued that he met the basic legal requirements to get out of jail: no flight risk or danger to the community.

Bush announcing Mukasey's nomination in the Rose Garden.

(Jim Lo Scalzo for USN&WR)

Testimony about his loyalties to his wife, mother, and friends was enough to persuade Mukasey to give Gant that right, albeit with strict supervision.

Coming from a tough law-and-order judge, the decision might seem unexpected. But, says Andrew Patel, the attorney representing Gant, the order exemplified how Mukasey treated everyone in his courtroom: with an open and fair mind. "He overlooked the fear of the moment and did what you would hope someone would do—take an objective view of who this man was," Patel says.

Decisions like this have won Mukasey widespread respect on the federal bench—and bipartisan praise since President Bush nominated him last week to replace the embattled Alberto Gonzales as the nation's attorney general. Although some congressional Democrats may stall his confirmation over outstanding document requests from the White House, Mukasey is likely to prevail, taking over a department beset by scandal and loss of public trust. The administration hopes for a hearing by early October.

Mukasey, 66, is no Washington insider or party loyalist. But he is a conservative clearly in tune with some of the administration's more prized national security policies. He began his career as a federal prosecutor and was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. As a federal judge, Mukasey protected the government's ability to arrest innocent people as material witnesses in terrorism investigations. And while he insisted that Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen arrested on suspicion of terrorist activities, have access to a lawyer, he granted prosecutors' requests to hold him indefinitely as an enemy combatant, a position later overturned by a higher court.

Death threats. Mukasey, known for his solid control of the courtroom, also presided over one of the biggest terrorism trials in U.S. history—the conspiracy case against the so-called blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman. That case, which also named Gant as a defendant, left a lasting mark on Mukasey, and not only because death threats required him to have round-the-clock bodyguards. It also shaped Mukasey's understanding of terrorism and convinced him that civilian courts were ill-equipped to handle the complexity and secrecy that characterized terrorism cases.

But even if he often leaned in favor of the government on national security, Mukasey displayed a deep concern for humanity, attorneys say. When Gant, who later pleaded guilty to lesser charges, was on supervised release, he sought permission to travel to Mecca for hajj. The government objected, Patel says, but Mukasey found no fault with the trip's sponsor. Mukasey knew that traveling to Mecca was an obligation for Muslims and, absent any suspicious motives, he saw no legal reason to bar the pilgrimage. It was a small gesture, but one Gant was unlikely to forget.