The Nominating Committee
The Nominating Committee selects nominees to serve as the Section’s Vice Chair, the other Officers, new Council Members (five new Council members each year, plus the replacement of any vacancies),* and members of the Section’s Advisory Board on Section Reserves. The Committee nominates and places leaders in ways designed to allow the Section to meet its goal of remaining “the world’s leading community of competition, consumer protection, and data privacy professionals.” The Nominating Committee is led by the former Immediate Past Chair (i.e., the person who served as Chair of the Section two years earlier). There are four other voting members of the Nominating Committee, who serve one-year terms and are selected by the incoming Section Chair in the same way as committee leaders (described below). The Section’s Chair, Immediate Past Chair, Chair-Elect, and Vice Chair/Diversity Officer serve as non-voting ex-officio members of the Nominating Committee.
The Committee begins its work by or before the Section’s Midwinter Leadership Meeting in January. The nominees are individually notified by or shortly before the Spring Meeting and the Committee’s nominations are published shortly after that meeting. Pursuant to the Section’s By- Laws, any Section Member who attends Section’s Annual Business Meeting, held in August as part of the ABA’s Annual Meeting, is eligible to vote to accept or reject the Nominating Committee’s recommendations. As a practical matter, the Section has no history of rejecting the recommendations of the Nominating Committee.
The Nominating Committee’s Process for Selecting the Section’s Officer and Council
In selecting the Section’s Vice Chair (who will automatically become the Section Chair in two years), the Nominating Committee generally looks to Officers who already have served in at least two different Officer positions and who have the breadth of experience in the various aspects of the Section’s works (committees, publications, programs, etc.) to serve as effective Chairs of the Section. The Nominating Committee considers candidates’ performance in their prior Officer positions, as Council members, and in prior Section leadership, their ability to work effectively with other Section leaders and the Section’s professional staff, and candidates’ ability to dedicate the enormous amount of time that is required to serve as the Section’s Vice-Chair, Chair-Elect, and Chair. Because the Vice Chair also serves as the Section’s Diversity Officer, the Nominating Committee also looks to candidates’ record of involvement with and commitment to the Section’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) efforts. Importantly, the Nominating Committee is also cognizant of considerations of racial/ethnic, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, geographic, and viewpoint diversity in making its nominations for Vice Chair, the other Officers, and Council members.
In selecting the Section’s other Officers, the nominating Committee generally looks to Officers and Council Members with expiring terms (and sometimes those whose terms are not expiring), although such service is not a prerequisite to consideration for an Officer position. In nominating Officers, the Nominating Committee looks both to substantive expertise (e.g., someone who has worked on programs to become Programs Officer) and to giving Officers new experience that could prepare them to serve eventually as Chair of the Section. It is rare for the Nominating Committee to recommend someone to serve as an Officer who has not previously served as a member of the Council, as Council membership provides the breadth of experience in issues facing the Section that is helpful to service as an Officer, although leaders who have not served on Council have successfully served as officers. Officers commonly move from one Officer role to another, and generally only one or two members of a class of Council members whose terms are expiring are nominated to serve as Officers.
New Council Members are generally selected from among the Section’s experienced leaders, typically from among individuals who have served in multiple different roles as Chairs of the Section’s committees, task forces, publications, and CLE programs. (Council members are not permitted to be renominated to serve consecutive three-year terms.)
In all cases the Nominating Committee considers individuals’ record of performance in Section leadership, ability to dedicate the required time, and the diversity factors described above.
At the beginning of the Nominating Committee process, Committee members receive information showing the full history of all roles held by members of Section leadership. To make its nominations the Nominating Committee members rely on their own experiences with candidates and the views of Section staff as reported by the Section Director. Section leaders interested in service in one of the positions selected by the Nominating Committee may make their interest known to the Chair of the Nominating Committee or its members, but “lobbying” for appointment is viewed unfavorably by the Committee.
Selection of Other Section Leaders
The Section Chair-Elect selects the Chairs, Vice-Chairs, and other leaders of the Section’s substantive and administrative committees, task forces, publication boards, and CLE programs for that Chair-Elect’s year as Chair. The Chair-Elect begins the process of selecting these nearly 700 leaders around the turn of the calendar year and finalizes it after the Spring Meeting but sufficiently before the Section’s Leadership Summit in August to issue invitations to all those leaders. While each leadership appointment is for one year, many of them, especially the substantive committee Chairs and Vice-Chairs, are expected to last three years. Appointments to task forces generally last for the full length of a task force (usually two years, though sometimes extended), appointments to treatise editorial boards generally last until the treatise is published, and leaders often serve for many years on publication editorial boards. All appointments are subject to review at any time for performance.
To make these selections, the Chair-Elect relies on input from at least the following sources: self-nominations (using an online form circulated broadly within the Section), the Chair-Elect’s own experiences and discussions with candidates; the Section Director and other Section staff; recommendations from the Co-Chairs of the Committee Operations Committee (which are based upon a review of the performance of all committee Chairs and Vice Chairs coordinated by Committee Operations); recommendations of Committee Co-Chairs for the promotion of Young Lawyer/Young Economist Reps and high-performing Committee members; and recommendations from other Officers and other leaders of the Section. In general, the Chair- Elect looks to prior Section work in appointing Committee Leadership. For example, experience organizing programs and writing articles for Committee publications is considered in the selection of Committee Vice Chairs. Additionally, active participation in other ABA programs (e.g., Law Student Ambassador Program, advisory boards), sections and other volunteering may be considered for new leadership appointments. Appointment as a Committee Chair is usually based upon multiple years of productive service as a Vice Chair on different committees. The views of the Section’s Programs Committee, Section Director, and Meetings Director are important in selecting leaders of the Section’s CLE programs, and the views of the Executive Editors of the Section’s periodicals are important in selecting editorial board members for those publications. Diversity (including diversity of viewpoint) is an important consideration in the appointments process, and the self-nomination process requires a candidate to explain how she or he would contribute to the realization of the Section’s DEI goals.