Constitutional Law

ACS Applauds Selection of Eric Holder for Attorney General

ACS yesterday congratulated Eric H. Holder Jr., on being tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to serve as the nation’s next attorney general. Paul M. Smith, chair of the ACS Board of Directors and a partner at Jenner & Block, lauded the selection of Holder, a member of the ACS Board of Directors and former U.S. Deputy Attorney General. Smith said, “Eric Holder is a man of integrity and vision, who will restore the confidence that Americans should have in their Department of Justice. He will bring a renewed commitment to fulfilling the Department’s mission and mandate to provide justice and equal treatment to all Americans.” See the entire ACS press release here.

The BLT: The Blog of the Legal Times reported that “key senators” have signaled they would support Holder’s confirmation. The legal blog added that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Holder has the “potential to be an attorney general in the mold of Robert F. Kennedy.” In an interview with The New York Times, Holder, who attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City, said that during his youth, becoming attorney general “was not on his radar.” The article noted Holder’s academic and extracurricular successes at Stuyvesant. Former classmates told the newspaper that Holder’s “intellectual gifts and witty down-to-earth demeanor could propel him to high places.”

Last month, ACS’s former Executive Director Lisa Brown was selected by President-elect Obama to serve as White House Staff Secretary. See the Times’ profile, part of a series called “The New Team,” of Brown here.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on December 02, 2008 (boomark / email).