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The fourth chapter considers how and why the Department of Justice chose to intervene on the NAACP’s behalf in the cases. It explores the overlapping political pressures influencing President Harry S. Truman’s administration and the growth of a newly strengthened partnership between the NAACP and the federal government in the nation’s courts. The chapter then examines the presentation of the cases before Supreme Court and the substance of Chief Justice Fred Vinson’s opinions in favor of the NAACP’s clients in Shelley v. Kraemer and Hurd v. Hodge. Finally, the chapter assesses some of the popular reactions to the outcome of the cases and what black communities hoped the victory would signal in the years ahead.

This chapter discusses the history, institutional structure, mandate, procedural characteristics, and agency performance of the competition law system of the United States. The US enforcement system is complex. There are two major federal enforcement agencies and fifty state enforcement agencies, plus five federal districts or territories, and enforcement through private litigation. The state attorneys general can enforce federal antitrust law as well as state antitrust law when state residents are injured. The two US federal agencies are the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission. The former is a division of the executive branch; the latter is an independent regulatory agency. The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice follows the bifurcated judicial model, investigating cases and bringing enforcement actions in federal courts of general jurisdiction. The Federal Trade Commission, consisting of five commissioners, follows the integrated agency model, with power to investigate and adjudicate cases internally, subject to subsequent appellate court review.

This chapter talks about how Kikuchi suspected that his belief in his alienable rights as a citizen would be severely challenged. A year earlier, Congress had passed the Alien Registration Act, requiring the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens over the age of fourteen. The law had passed in large part due to unsubstantiated rumors of fifth column activity and espionage on the part of enemy aliens, especially German Americans. At the same time, the Department of Justice and the FBI were compiling a short list of dangerous or subversive aliens—German, Italian, and Japanese—who were to be arrested as soon as war broke out with their particular countries. The chapter shows how Kikuchi viewed the situation through a racial lens—citing Hitler's anti-Jewish pogroms—whereas he had been preoccupied with class after his migratory work in the San Joaquin Valley.

This chapter argues that the Reagan administration applied three overarching strategies to use the courts to turn back the clock on civil rights: first, the replacement of federal judges with those who supported retrenchment on civil rights; second, the redefinition of rights and responsibilities to facilitate the rewriting of legal precedent; and third, the reconstruction of government mechanisms that dealt with civil rights policies. Reagan used the Department of Justice and the Office of the Solicitor General to institutionalize conservative definitions of civil rights.

America's entry into war on April 2, 1917, turned Mencken's life upside down. As a German-American now writing for the New York Evening Mail, he became the target of super-patriots. George Creel launched the Espionage Act, containing some of the broadest and most restrictive sanctions against civil liberties and free speech that the country ever witnessed. As a German-American who felt separated from American society, Mencken began to gain insight on another group he had derided years earlier: African-Americans. Together with James Weldon Johnson, they urged black Americans to start writing realistically about racial issues, including lynching. Mencken also met Philip Goodman, and wrote A Book of Prefaces and Damn a Book of Calumny, both of which attacked American literature and conformity head on.

Chapter 5 examines the US involvement in the Colombian Justice and Peace Process. During the negotiations of the Justice and Peace Law, Congress advocated for strengthening the provisions on accountability for paramilitary leaders who had committed serious human rights violations, while the Department of Justice pushed to maintain its ability to extradite those leaders who were also drug traffickers. A stronger law was passed in 2005, and the Justice Department and USAID provided extensive support to operationalize it. A few years into the process, Colombia extradited several paramilitary leaders to the United States on drug trafficking charges, which some observers believed undermined the justice and peace process.

This chapter examines Joe T. Patterson's advocacy of racist principles to thwart black advancement and federal intervention. By 1960, the modern civil rights movement was gaining momentum as activists and their organizations made better organized and more sustained efforts to lift up African Americans and challenge their second-class status in the South. Over the next two years, Patterson and white southerners everywhere witnessed some of the most sustained direct action protests in American history, including the looming sit-ins and the Freedom Rides. This chapter first considers Patterson's opposition to the funding of the Sovereignty Commission's publicity campaign called Citizens' Council Forum, along with his efforts to defund the Citizens' Council. It then discusses Patterson's criticism of the US Department of Justice for defending the civil rights movement and the case Bailey v. Patterson filed by Sam Bailey against him and the state of Mississippi over the continued enforcement of segregation on interstate buses. It also explores Patterson's stand on the issue of voting rights for African Americans in Mississippi.

This chapter examines the implications of James Meredith's attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962 for the Jim Crow South and the white leadership in Mississippi. The central question arising from the Meredith crisis was how far members of the white hierarchy would be willing to go to maintain segregation in higher education. Ross Barnett and the Citizens' Council forced a reluctant federal government to intervene, resulting in the eruption of violence on the campus. Others, like Joe T. Patterson, were more willing to bend in order to maintain as much power as possible. This chapter first discusses Meredith's fight for admission to Ole Miss that culminated in Meredith v. Fair as well as Patterson's attempt to keep Meredith out of the university. It then considers the US Supreme Court ruling in favor of Meredith and the US Department of Justice's involvement in the case. It also explores Patterson's the behind-the-scenes efforts to finally allow Meredith to enter the campus.

Harry Blackmun avoided getting involved in certain political activities associated with what was prominent among federal judges as he worked as a lawyer in Minneapolis and was part of the Mayo Clinic's resident counsel. In contrast to Warren Burger, one of his boyhood friends, Harry Blackmun remained only nominally Republican, and was not able to participate in such activities attributed to party politics. Burger actively participated in politics as he played no small part in Harold Stassen's campaign and formed allies with Herbert Brownell. Burger then became part of the new Eisenhower administration and was appointed as the head of the Department of Justice's Civil Division. Blackmun and Burger exchanged correspondence during this time, mostly regarding Burger's work. This chapter demonstrates how Burger was appointed a seat for the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, how Blackmun was to replace Sanborn upon his retirement, and how Blackmun was appointed to the Eighth Circuit.

This chapter examines depth in norms, shared understandings of what constitutes appropriate political and institutional behavior. Norms that shield the work of administrators reflect an abiding, collective interest in preventing the operations of the executive branch from being overrun by personal interests and the political calculations of the moment. Nowhere in the executive branch do norms play a larger role than in law enforcement, where they figure prominently in public perception of the legitimacy of the entire operation. By the same token, however, political insulation and administrative discretion make the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice prime sites both for resistance to the claims of a unitary executive and for presidential suspicions about a Deep State with interests of its own.

Why do U.S. Attorneys leave office, and what do they do when they finish their tenure? Federal prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the president and can be dismissed using a president’s removal power. Analyzing data on U.S. Attorneys since the Reagan Administration, we demonstrate that, aside from a routine turnover of U.S. Attorney positions at the beginning of a new administration, presidents rarely fire U.S. Attorneys. When presidents remove chief federal prosecutors in the middle of their term, they typically pay great political costs to do so. We further follow these U.S. Attorneys’ careers—to Congress, the bench, and the governor’s mansion—after they leave office, illustrating that U.S. Attorney positions serve as a springboard for many ambitious politicians to seek higher office. In this way, presidential selections of federal prosecutors have long-lasting effects on American politics.

During 1942 and 1943, Stainback, now governor, joined by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and Attorney General Francis Biddle, pressured the War Department and President Roosevelt to order at least a partial restoration of civilian authority in the Islands. In August 1942 they concluded an agreement for “delineation” of functions, restoring partial jurisdiction by civilian courts over criminal law matters, but with military tribunals still exercising jurisdiction over the 80,000 civilians engaged in defense-related work. The Military Governor issued new orders that apparently negated key parts of the agreement, leading to an intensification of the pressures on the War Department. After additional interdepartmental meetings in Washington, further modifications were ordered; and the President finally intervened personally, requiring some restoration of government functions to the civilian officials. He also instructed that General Green, the Executive, should be replaced. “Restoration Day” was celebrated in March, 1943. Nonetheless, habeas remained suspended and the Army still retained final authority in areas of Hawai`i life related to defense.

What function do federal prosecutors play in the modern political system, and how has this role changed over time? In this chapter, we explore the historical evolution of federal prosecutors and the DOJ (and its predecessors) and review the organization of the modern DOJ. We provide evidence that politics and the administration of federal justice have always been tightly intertwined. Moreover, the enlargement of federal law since the Civil War has brought with it the an increase in the size of the federal prosecutorial machine, the DOJ, and the role of the U.S. Attorney General. Using data from the DOJ, we illustrate the growth of the federal prosecutorial machine and discuss its ramifications for the role of the U.S. Attorney in the modern political system.

This chapter explores discrimination based on suicidality, with special emphasis on employment, higher education, and healthcare. It surveys the tension between fear of tort liability, on the one hand, and liability for discrimination, on the other. This tension has driven colleges and universities to discriminatory and counterproductive policies, which have resulted in litigation by private parties and the Department of Justice against institutions of higher education. The contrast between the approaches of the Departments of Justice and Education to this issue is discussed. Employers have responded in a variety of ways to employees’ suicidality; model approaches are outlined in the chapter. The chapter concludes that unified national standards that businesses, colleges, and universities could follow are desperately needed.

This chapter examines the role of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in the Red Scare. Following the general strike of radical workers and the explosion of bombs in eight different cities in 1919, the Department of Justice orchestrated a massive sweep of raids, and arrests of suspected radicals, whom it loaded onto a ship headed for Finland. The Red Scare presented opportunities for the AFL to collaborate with the Bureau of Investigation. During this period, attacking radical labor movements such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) remained the AFL's priority.

This chapter examines the Bush administration's election-related legal detours, with partticular emphasis on its attempts to pressure prosecutors such as David Iglesias, United States Attorney for New Mexico, to ignore long-standing rules and traditions insulating federal prosecutors from politics. It also considers the administration's disregard for the value of prosecutorial discretion and discusses the Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore, which addressed vote dilution and vote suppression concerns. Finally, it analyzes the Bush administration's bias in the prosecution of public officials and how the Department of Justice carried out political prosecutions within a short period of time prior to elections.