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WASHINGTON—Nearly four years after she was first nominated by President Bush to serve on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to send the nomination of Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen to the full Senate. The committee voted 10-8 along party lines.The vote was her third in the committee, but her nomination has been stalled through the use of a filibuster by Senate Democrats who denied a vote by the full Senate. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the committee who served with Justice Owen on the Texas Supreme Court, said that “after waiting four long years for an up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate, her wait should come to an end.”“Priscilla Owen, with whom I served on the Texas Supreme Court, is an outstanding nominee. She’s been waiting four years and now will receive a vote out of the Judiciary Committee to go to the Senate Floor, where I hope she will receive an up or-down-vote,” Cornyn said. “But she has been waiting more than four years, due to the insistence for the first time in the history of the United States Senate, to require 60 votes just to get the opportunity to get an up or down vote. My hope is that we will restore the 200 year tradition of majority rule, and simply allow a bipartisan majority to confirm her for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. She’s waited too long.”Cornyn continued: “Justice Owen is among the finest legal minds of our time. Unlike her partisan opponents and fringe special interest groups, I served with her on the Texas Supreme Court and know her to be a fair, reasonable and highly skilled member of the bench. The obstruction is wrong and must be stopped. Priscilla Owen, judicial nominees now and in the future, and the American people deserve better than the treatment they’ve received by this partisan minority of the Senate.”Though a bipartisan majority of the Senate stood ready to confirm her nomination in the last Congress, partisan Democrats obstructed the process, and refused to allow her nomination to be heard by the full Senate. Four cloture votes were held on her nomination, all were blocked by a partisan minority of the Senate.Justice Owen received the American Bar Association’s highest possible rating: a unanimous “well qualified.” Prior to her election to the Texas Supreme Court in 1994, she was a partner in the Houston office of Andrews & Kurth L.L.P. where she practiced commercial litigation for seventeen years. She received her bachelor’s degree from Baylor University, and graduated in the top of her class from Baylor Law School in 1977. In her successful re-election bid to the Supreme Court of Texas in 2000, every major newspaper in Texas endorsed Owen.Sen. Cornyn is chairman of the Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship subcommittee and former chairman of the Constitution subcommittee. He served previously as Texas Attorney General and was a Texas Supreme Court Justice. Cornyn is a former Bexar County District Judge and the only former judge to sit on the Judiciary Committee.