Charleston County’s Dawson confirmed by US Senate to be new SC federal judge

Longtime Charleston County general counsel Joseph Dawson III was confirmed Wednesday by the U.S. Senate on a 56-39 vote as South Carolina’s newest federal judge.

Dawson, 50, a 1991 graduate of The Citadel and 1997 graduate of the University of South Carolina Law School, will be the only African American male judge on the state’s federal bench. He still will have to be formally sworn in.

Federal judges, who oversee federal civil and criminal hearings and trials, are lifetime appointments.

Dawson will likely take a significant pay cut to become a federal judge. In 2019, he was paid $421,357 by Charleston County, according to an article in The Charleston Post & Courier. As a district court judge, he will make approximately $216,000 a year.

It sometimes takes many months for a judicial candidate’s vetting to take place and his or her nomination to go through first the Senate Judiciary Committee and then the U.S. Senate.

But Dawson’s vetting, nomination by President Trump on Oct. 1, his Nov. 18 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and Wednesday’s confirmation by the Senate took little more than four months, thanks to his ties to South Carolina Republican Sens. Tim Scott and Sen. Lindsey Graham, said Carl Tobias, longtime federal courts watcher and professor at University of Richmond Law School.

“Senator Scott was one of his champions, and Senator Graham, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, boosted him (Dawson) up over a number of other nominees, maybe 20 or 25,” Tobias said. “A lot of credit goes to those senators.”

In introducing Dawson to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 18, Scott said he had known Dawson for 17 years and Dawson has been married 29 years and has three children. “As good as an attorney as he is, he is a better husband. He is a better father.”

Scott continued, “He is an excellent person of high integrity, deep faith and strong character.”

In his experience on county council, Scott said, Dawson doesn’t tell people what they want to hear, “He tells you the law ... We disagreed on a number of occasions, and .... Joe was right more than I was.”

In his biography, in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s public record, Dawson gave credit to Scott for launching him on the way to a judgeship.

“In early 2020, I expressed an interest in serving as a federal judge to Sen. Tim Scott. I received a telephone call on Aug. 7, 2020, from the White House Counsel’s office asking if I were interested in serving as a District Judge for ... South Carolina. On Aug. 10, 2020, I interviewed with attorneys from the White House Counsel’s office and the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, and on Aug. 13, I was contacted by the White House Counsel’s office and informed that I was being considered for a nomination.”

On Wednesday, Scott was first out with a press release about the confirmation. “I have had the pleasure of knowing Joe for nearly two decades. He is a lifelong servant of South Carolina, and I have no doubt that he will be an excellent federal judge serving on South Carolina’s district court,” Scott said. “I am proud to have nominated Joe and am grateful to my colleagues for supporting his nomination.”

As a longtime county attorney, Dawson has relatively little criminal experience, but he will be going to what Tobias called “baby judge’s school” — a week-long boot camp for new federal judges that introduces them to the mechanics of being a federal judge.

In a biographical questionnaire Dawson filled out before appearing before the Judiciary Committee, he said that:

▪ He was born in 1970 at Fort Jackson in Columbia.

▪ He has been Charleston County’s attorney since 2001 and with that office since 1997. Also, he has been a private attorney since 2001 and characterized himself as a “part time solo practitioner.” Between graduating from college and going to law school, he worked for three years as a project analyst with Charleston County.

▪ He is a member of the Harbour Club and has a Coosaw Creek Country Club golf membership.

▪ Over the years, he has advised the Charleston County Council on numerous legal matters. This year’s advice has included recommendations on COVID-19 related issues such as face masks coverings and beach closings, but Dawson’s positions were not immediately ascertainable from his answers.

▪ As county attorney, he supervises staff attorneys, outside lawyers and has a $1.7 million budget.

▪ Over his career, he has tried 22 trials to verdict, including 10 of which he was chief counsel and 12 of which he was supervising second chair. Those cases included tax and zoning disputes, among others.

In his written responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dawson answered “yes” when asked by U.S. Sen. Corey Booker, D-NJ., if he (Dawson) believed there was “implicit racial bias in our criminal justice system?” and “Do you believe people of color are disproportionately represented in our nation’s jails and prisons?”

Dawson also pledged to hand out sentences without regard to race. “I believe disparities in sentencing for similarly situated defendants who commit the same crimes are a great injustice.... I can commit that, if confirmed as a federal district court judge, I will endeavor to ensure that similarly situated defendants who commit the same crimes receive proportional sentences irrespective of their race.”

Dawson, like many federal judicial candidates, was asked if he believed the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education, which overturned some 60 years of legal segregation in schools, was correctly decided.

Dawson said, “Brown, which corrected a grave injustice caused by Plessy v. Ferguson, was correctly decided.”

This story was originally published December 16, 2020 at 4:36 PM.