Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking to a liberal gathering Thursday night, touted the Obama administration’s commitment to civil rights enforcement.
Addressing a dinner at the American Constitutional Society annual convention, the attorney general also assured the group that the administration also remains committed to keeping terror-related cases in civilian courts.
While many at the dinner railed against what they saw as conservative effort to influence the judiciary, Holder took the opportunity to shore up the administration’s record with the “heartbeat of the progressive community.”
“While I’m not naive about today’s budget limitations, I am confident that we can find the solutions that we need to ensure the integrity of our legal system and to honor the promise of equal justice for all,” Holder said.
Knowing his audience, Holder highlighted the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division for its prolific caseload, breaking the record for the number of civil rights cases two times in as many years.
He also promoted the department’s relatively new Access to Justice Office, launched last year with the help of Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who spent nine months as a senior counselor with the department before returning to Harvard University.
Tribe’s replacement, Senior Counselor Mark Childress attended the dinner.
Holder also underscored the administration’s attempts to prevent congressional attempts to hold terrorism-related cases in military tribunals and ban the use of “Article Three” courts, which he portrayed as an infringement on the department’s prerogative to determine judicial venue.
“In disrupting potential attacks and effectively interrogating, prosecuting, and incarcerating terrorists, there is, quite simply, no more powerful tool than our civilian court system,” he said. “Despite this fact, some in Congress have proposed to ban the use of Article Three courts in prosecuting terrorism-related cases. They claim that utilizing our civilian court system – as we have for more than 200 years – would somehow jeopardize public safety.”
“We continue to see overheated rhetoric that is detached from history – and from the facts,” Holder said. “For these reasons, we must speak out. And we must set the record straight.”
