Private: Thank you, Attorney General Holder

by Judy Appelbaum, Visiting Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Acting Assistant Attorney General and Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs, 2009-2013.

When Eric Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2009 on his nomination to serve as Attorney General, he pledged to faithfully execute his duties by adhering to the precepts and principles of the Constitution, and to do so in a fair, just and independent manner. He also promised to reinvigorate the traditional missions of the Department of Justice and emphasized that one of his top priorities would be to safeguard what he called our precious civil rights.  He has lived up to those commitments, and he will leave office with an extraordinary record of accomplishment. 

I was privileged to have a close-up view of Attorney General Holder’s stewardship of the Department when I helped lead DOJ’s office of legislative affairs for the first four years of his tenure. Right at the beginning, I saw the determination and energy he put into passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which gave the Department new tools to address violent hate crimes and for the first time enabled DOJ to protect LGBT victims.  After the bill became law, he made sure that the Department aggressively investigated and pursued such crimes wherever warranted by the facts and the law. 

Demonstrating his commitment to fairness in the criminal justice system, early in his term Attorney General Holder also pressed Congress to pass the Fair Sentencing Act to reduce crack-powder sentencing disparities that disproportionately penalized African American offenders.  He didn’t rest on that legislative success, either. He then launched the Smart on Crime Initiative, which led to a series of path-breaking reforms. These include a change in the Department’s charging policies to avoid triggering excessive mandatory minimum penalties for low-level, non-violent drug offenders, and measures to reduce barriers faced by ex-offenders as they re-enter society. Under Holder’s innovative Access to Justice Initiative, the Department has found ways to help ensure that indigent criminal defendants receive adequate legal representation. 

I also had a front-row seat on the intense deliberations leading up to the Attorney General’s momentous decision to cease defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court. I know that Eric Holder is a stalwart supporter of LGBT equality. I also know that his conclusion that DOMA could not be sustained under the Constitution – a conclusion vindicated by the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision last year – was based on a meticulous analysis of relevant legal principles and precedents.   

Attorney General Holder has called the right to vote the most sacred of American rights, and his record of protecting the franchise shows that he means it. Under his leadership, and that of then-Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights (now Labor Secretary) Tom Perez, the Department successfully challenged numerous voting restrictions that threatened to block or deter racial minorities from exercising this fundamental right.  Since the Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act last year in Shelby County, the Department has worked with Congress on a proposal to restore the power of the VRA within the limits of the Court’s decision, while fully exercising the VRA authority that remains in force. At the same time, mindful that our goal as a nation should be to expand the franchise, Holder recently called for repeal of laws that senselessly and unjustly bar felons from voting long after they have served their time.

I couldn’t possibly catalogue all of the civil rights accomplishments and initiatives during Eric Holder’s tenure as AG – or recite even highlights of the Department’s achievements in other areas such as (to name only a few) protecting the environment, advancing justice in Indian Country and combatting fraud. I will simply end my brief list with a comment on Holder and the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri. Under Holder, the Department has been actively working to end abusive police practices and build trust between law enforcement and communities of color all across the country. This work is not new, but Ferguson shined a light on it and showed how critical it continues to be. And how fitting, and moving, that when Ferguson erupted, Holder seized the chance to meet personally with community leaders there, assure them that DOJ would conduct a wide-ranging examination of local police practices, and have a calming influence that no one else but he – the nation’s first African American Attorney General and a man with serious law enforcement and civil rights credentials – could have provided.

Of course Attorney General Holder has drawn criticism, some of it harsh. But it’s important to put the attacks in context. AG’s are always lightening rods; given the kinds of decisions they confront, a measure of controversy is inevitable no matter who is in the job. On some issues that drew fire during Holder’s tenure, most notably involving national security and secrecy, reasonable minds can sincerely differ. On at least one much-maligned Holder position – his view that terrorist suspects should stand trial in Article III courts, even in Manhattan – subsequent convictions in federal district court have proven him correct. And the most virulent attacks against Holder, including what The Washington Post appropriately called the phony scandals, quite clearly were not prompted by anything Eric Holder actually did; they were products of the extreme partisanship that pervades Washington these days and Holder’s role as a “heat shield” for hostility – whether or not racially motivated – aimed at the President by his political enemies.  If those assaults mean anything, it is that Holder deserves our admiration and gratitude for enduring them as long as he did and managing to stay focused on doing the important work he had pledged to do.

By any objective measure, Eric Holder’s service as Attorney General, and above all his achievements on civil rights and criminal justice reform, have lived up to the lofty goals he set when appointed to office. This summation from civil rights icon Merlie Evers says it all: “There has been no greater ally in the fight for justice, civil rights, equal rights and voting rights than Attorney General Holder.”

Democracy and Elections, Voting Rights