Professors Bruce Green, Bennett Capers, and Andrew Kent were quoted in a Newsweek article on President-Elect Joe Biden’s attorney general selection process.
Bruce Green, director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham University School of Law, similarly told Newsweek Biden must continue to assert the department’s independence and the attorney general nominee should do so in their confirmation hearings.
“The Attorney General nominee should promise to preserve the Department’s independence in criminal cases and should be specific about what that means. Nominees conventionally acknowledge the importance of prosecutorial independence but are almost never pressed to say what that means,” Green said.
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On the other hand, Bennett Capers, professor of law and director of the center on race, law and justice at Fordham University, suggested another means of separation to allow cases to not be interfered with could be appointing a permanent special counsel.
“Biden has made it pretty clear that he has no intention of telling the DOJ what to do with respect to any investigation. ‘It’s not my Justice Department. It’s the people’s Justice Department,'” Capers said.
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Andrew Kent, a professor of law at Fordham University, agreed that choosing someone with a strong reputation that avoids them being painted as partisan will be key.
“Perhaps the most important move would be to nominate someone to be Attorney General who is above the partisan fray and whose reputation for integrity is beyond any reasonable dispute,” he told Newsweek.