Legal Commentary

Fin-uh-lee! An OLC nominee

By John Elwood

Yesterday, the White House finally sent to the Senate the long-rumored nomination of Virginia Seitz to be Assistant Attorney General.  I?ve discussed the (then-rumored) nomination here.  

In keeping with tradition, the nomination does not specify that Seitz would be AAG for the Office of Legal Counsel. If I remember correctly, that is because the legislation creating most of the Justice Department?s AAG spots doesn?t specify that they?ll head a particular office. As a technical matter, this might permit the Attorney General to reassign one AAG to head another DOJ component (so long as the legislation creating that AAG spot is similarly general). Thus (for example), the AG could switch the confirmed AAG for the Criminal Division and the confirmed AAG for OLC without renominating either of them. But that strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely to happen, since it would make the relevant Senate committees so unhappy.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on January 06, 2011 (boomark / email).