Jefferson Powell Quotes (8 Quotes)

It entirely depends on the administration. The Justice Department, as far back as I am aware, has always had a role, and I assume will always have one, of vetting nominees assembling information, doing that sort of work. Whether the attorney general and her subordinates are actively involved in choices about judicial appointments is going to depend on who the attorney general is and what his or her relationship to the president is,

That Roberts is a conservative Republican willing and no doubt enthusiastic to be part of Bush I, we already knew, ... We will not learn much else from any memo from his time at the solicitor general's office unless improbably a personal note from him to the attorney general was revealed.

I am very reluctant to see internal stuff revealed except where there is some clear public reason for doing so, ... No one seriously thinks that Roberts is a raving lunatic, and as a pragmatic matter he is simply not going to be defeated. So neither on public nor partisan grounds do I think that my presumption of confidentiality is overcome.

It is rather unlikely that memos signed by the deputy solicitor general will be crassly or even overtly political. What is said will be said, almost certainly, in terms of supposed 'professional' judgments about what would persuade the Supreme Court.

Despite all of the references to 'senior policy maker,' the principal deputy solicitor general isn't really that,

The department has a lively and strong sense of tradition and even if one was disposed to ignore that, it would be awfully hard to do that in the teeth of all these very smart civil servants who say 'No, this is not what we do, or this is the position the department has always taken,'

I'm inclined to think my fellow Democrats are making a mistake wasting a lot of energy -- indeed, wasting any energy at all -- on these memos,

The current attorney general is known for having had a focus on children and issues concerning children. That kind of focus and devotion of attention and energy is something that is obviously and legitimately in the attorney general's prerogative. But no, he or she must enforce the laws that Congress chooses to enact,