Miguel Estrada

In May 2010, Estrada wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of President Barack Obama's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, as Estrada and Kagan have remained friends since meeting as students at Harvard Law School. In his letter, Estrada strongly commended Kagan for appointment to the court as "an impeccably qualified nominee" possessed of a "formidable intellect" and an "exemplary temperament." While openly recognizing that her views on judicial role and Constitutional interpretation are "as firmly center-left as my own are center-right," Estrada went on to insist that "one of the prerogatives of the President under our Constitution is to nominate high federal officers, including judges, who share his (or her) governing philosophies." In 1999, Kagan had been nominated by President Clinton to serve on the D.C. Circuit—the same court Estrada was later nominated to. At that time, Kagan was kept off the circuit court because Republicans—the majority party in the Senate—refused to give her a hearing or a vote, though she was not subjected to the filibuster later used by Democrats to block Estrada's nomination.

Likewise, at her confirmation hearing on June 29, 2010, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when asked by Senator Lindsey Graham whether she believed that Estrada was qualified to serve on an appellate court, Kagan responded affirmatively and added that she believed Estrada was qualified to serve on the Supreme Court as well. Kagan then told Senator Graham that she would welcome the opportunity to put this belief in writing after her hearing. When questioned by Senator Coburn the following day, she reaffirmed her position, saying that she "...would have voted for him". In July 2010, in follow-up to her promise to Senator Graham, Kagan wrote a letter expressing her belief in Estrada's "superlative" qualifications for appointment to "any federal court," whether to the federal appellate or to the U.S. Supreme Court. In her letter, Kagan commended Estrada as "a towering intellect" with "a prodigious capacity for hard work," also remarking that "no one I know is a more faithful friend or a more fundamentally decent person".

Estrada joined Rudy Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign as a judicial adviser.

Estrada was married to Laury Gordon Estrada until her death at age 46 on November 28, 2004. She died of an accidental overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills, having also miscarried during the nomination fight.

On March 6, 2003, there was the first of seven failed cloture votes on Estrada. Fifty-five senators voted to end debate on his nomination and allow a final confirmation vote, and forty-four senators voted not to end debate. After twenty-eight months in political limbo and a protracted six-month battle using the filibuster, Estrada withdrew his name from further consideration on September 4, 2003. Bush nominated Thomas B. Griffith in his place, who was confirmed in 2005 under the terms of the Gang of 14 Deal.

George W. Bush nominated Estrada to a position on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on May 9, 2001. He received a unanimous "well-qualified" rating from the American Bar Association.

From 1990 until 1992, Estrada served as Assistant U.S. Attorney and Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section, U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York. In 1992, he joined the United States Department of Justice as an Assistant to the Solicitor General for the George H. W. Bush Administration where he served with now Chief Justice John G. Roberts. In those capacities, Estrada represented the government in numerous jury trials and in many appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, he practiced law in New York with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree from Columbia in 1983. He received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree magna cum laude in 1986 from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Estrada served as a law clerk, first for Judge Amalya Lyle Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court during Kennedy's first year on the Court in 1988. One of Estrada's fellow clerks that year was Peter Keisler, another conservative nominee to the D.C. Circuit whose nomination lapsed during the 110th Congress without a Senate vote cast on whether to confirm.

Numerous judicial nominees prior to Estrada had been kept off the courts, when the Senate refused to let the nomination out of committee for a floor vote. A filibuster had been used in 1968 to extend debate regarding the elevation of Associate Justice Abe Fortas to Chief Justice of the United States, but the Estrada filibuster was different in multiple ways. Estrada's was the first filibuster ever to be successfully used against a judicial nominee who had clear support of the majority in the Senate. Estrada's was the first filibuster of any court of appeals nominee. It was also the first filibuster that prevented a judicial nominee from joining a court.

Miguel Angel Estrada Castañeda (born September 25, 1961) is an attorney who became embroiled in controversy following his 2001 nomination by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Senate Democrats, claiming Estrada was a conservative ideologue with no experience as a judge, and unable to block his nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee after the Republican Party took control of the Senate in 2002, used a filibuster to prevent his nomination from being given a final confirmation vote by the full Senate.