Kate Brown taps own lawyer, lawmaker as judges

Gov. Kate Brown's state lawyer and a state legislator from Lake Oswego are among the eight people Brown is appointing to become judges on the Multnomah and Clackamas county circuit courts and Oregon Court of Appeals.

"Oregonians will be rightly proud to welcome this group of exceedingly talented and diverse lawyers into judicial service," Brown said in a statement.

Brown tapped as incoming Multnomah County Circuit Court judge Ben Souede, who has served as her general counsel since she was sworn into office following Gov. John Kitzhaber's resignation in February 2015. Other judicial nominees on the list with high-level political credentials include one of Kitzhaber's state lawyers, Steven Powers, who will take a seat on the Oregon Court of Appeals, and Rep. Ann Lininger, D-Lake Oswego, whom Brown appointed to the Clackamas County Circuit Court.

The appointments take effect July 17. The governor's deputy general counsel, Misha Isaak, will succeed Souede as general counsel.

The governor's lawyer typically plays a role in selecting judicial candidates, and the Oregon State Bar website directs people to submit comments on potential nominees to Souede. Brown's press secretary Bryan Hockaday did not immediately respond to questions late Tuesday about how the governor selected her latest round of  judicial appointees and Souede's role in the process.  Souede also did not respond to a request for comment.

Souede graduated from Harvard Law School, then worked as a law clerk to Judge Susan P. Graber on the U.S. 9th Court of Appeals. He was a senior adviser to then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, then worked at a law firm in Washington, D.C. before moving to Portland, according to the governor's office. Souede was a founding partner at Angeli Law Group before taking the general counsel job in Brown's administration.

Brown's appointment of Souede is not without precedent. In 2009, then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski appointed his general counsel Kelly Skye to fill a vacancy on the Multnomah County Circuit Court.

Lininger had a brief career in the Legislature that started in early 2014, when the former Clackamas County commissioner was appointed to replace Chris Garrett who'd accepted an appointment to the Oregon Court of Appeals. She held a key position in 2015 on a legislative committee tasked with implementing the state's new legal recreational marijuana system. Lininger sometimes came down on the side of the marijuana industry, openly clashing with senators over allowing local governments to ban medical marijuana facilities. She's currently an attorney with the Metropolitan Public Defender and previously practiced business law.

Powers, who served as Kitzhaber's deputy general counsel and public safety policy advisor from 2011 through 2015, is currently an insurance coverage and appellate attorney at the Portland law firm Parsons Farnell & Grein, according to the governor's office. Powers previously worked as a deputy district attorney in Multnomah County and an appellate attorney at the Oregon Department of Justice.

Brown also appointed Bronson James, a recently appointed Multnomah County judge and former defense attorney, and Robyn Ridler Aoyagi, an experienced appellate litigator who serves on the executive board of the national bar association's Council of Appellate Lawyers, to the Oregon Court of Appeals.

For the Clackamas County district court, she also appointed Ulanda Watkins, a managing attorney at insurance firm GEICO and former defense attorney, who will be the only judge of color on the Clackamas court and just the third black woman judge on the Oregon state bench.

Brown also named two other judges to the Multnomah court: Katharine von Ter Stegge, an attorney for Multnomah County who worked on the federal court challenge to Oregon's ban on gay marriage during her seven years there, and Christopher A. Ramras, who has worked as a Multnomah County prosecutor since 2002 and spent five years as a military prosecutor and defense attorney for the U.S. Air Force.

All eight of Brown's latest judicial appointees are in their 40s, except for Ramras, who is 51. The youngest are Souede, 40, and von Ter Stegge, 41. Her appointments to the Court of Appeals could impact decades of future case law, since all three are 45 or younger.

This story has been updated to reflect the following correction: an earlier version of this story incorrectly described Lininger's tenure on the Clackamas County Commission.

-- Hillary Borrud

503-294-4034; @hborrud

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