Law and Politics
Ostrow, Griffin B. Bell with Ronald J.
Law and Politics TAKING CARE OF THE LAW by Griffin B. Bell with Ronald J. Ostrow William Morrow. 254 pp. $13.50. n this pettish memoir of his two and a half years as Attorney General, Griffin...
...The issue of crime control receives similarly cavalier treatment...
...Bell was steadfast in his support of the TVA in the snail-darter case, despite great pressure from Stuart Eizenstat, Carter's domestic-affairs adviser...
...Jack Anderson is an "error-prone gossip columnist...
...He annoyed environmentalists with his position in the snail-darter case...
...He pursued organized crime and white-collar criminals, and he tightly regulated the intelligence-gathering procedures of the FBI and the CIA...
...Although Bell does a creditable job in describing and defending the specific cases and policies he pursued as Attorney General, Taking Care of the Law is unfortunately studded with superficial discussions of such general issues as crime control and the role of the state in a democracy...
...Which of these agencies exercises Bell...
...He never says...
...Francis J. Flaherty (Francis J. Flaherty, a 1981 graduate of Harvard Law School and a former executive editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, has contributed to Harper's, Commonweal, the Hudson Review, and other publications...
...The Nuclear Regulatory Commission exists to prevent a nuclear surprise from being foisted upon an unsuspecting citizenry...
...In sum, Griffin Bell is sensitive to the notion that enforcement of the law ought not to be a partisan undertaking...
...n this pettish memoir of his two and a half years as Attorney General, Griffin Bell grouses about nearly everyone in Washington...
...There is plenty of room to disagree, on legal grounds, with the positions Bell took in such cases as Bakke, Snepp, and The Progressive...
...Environmentalists may carp about his position in the snail-darter case—as Eizenstat feared—but Bell believes that the Attorney General is constitutionally forbidden from considering the political effects of his acts...
...Bell's primary goal as Attorney General was "to make the department a neutral zone in the Government, free of political interference or influence...
...Bell believes that the Constitution, which instructs the President to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," means that the Department of Justice—the enforcer of the law—mu$t be apolitical...
...Toward that end and with President Carter's approval, Bell issued rules insulating Justice attorneys from the political pressures of the White House and Capitol Hill...
...The Food and Drug Administration exists because Congress, sensibly enough, believed that individual consumers had neither time, nor resources, nor expertise to perform sophisticated chemical analyses of possibly lethal products...
...But on the need for strict separation of law enforcement and politicking, Griffin Bell cut an estimable figure...
...Moreover, many of his readers will be greatly disappointed by Bell's lackadaisical treatment of such grave issues as crime control and government regulation...
...Similarly, Bell resented Walter Monday's attempts to dictate Justice's position on a particularly ticklish question of church-state law involving the CETA program...
...Bell tolerated no interference from the movers and shakers of Washington...
...Griffin Bell does not seem to have enjoyed his stewardship of the Department of Justice...
...And he did not endear himself to champions of the First Amendment by insisting on seeking an injunction against publication of Howard Morland's H-bomb article in The Progressive even after the discovery that the important information in the piece was publicly available...
...his pique—so evident throughout the book— stems in part from his efforts to preserve his department's neutrality and independence...
...The bureaucrats speak "managementese...
...Nor was his ire confined to liberals: When conservatives from the nation's intelligence community rebelled against his strict regulation of their activities, he gave them equally short shrift...
...But, putting aside those contentious cases, Bell left behind a solid record in Washington...
...For Bell, the snail-darter case could not be seen as a volatile political skirmish between environmentalists and industry...
...it was solely a legal question involving interpretation of the Endangered Species Act...
...I particularly recommend Taking Care of the Law to William French Smith, the current Attorney General, whose insensitivity to his constitutional duties led him to make this astounding announcement in November 1981: "The Department of Justice intends to play an active role in effecting the principles upon which Ronald Reagan campaigned...
...He irked the State Department by vigorously prosecuting spies despite the Department's warnings that such trials would damage detente and endanger American agents abroad...
...He angered just about everybody by his decision not to take a strong stance on the Bakke issue...
...Even his own subordinates betrayed him by cramming his calendar with so many trips that he finally realized he "was being scheduled out of office...
...As any lawyer even nod-dingly familiar with administrative law knows, "regulation" means many things...
...He pushed hard for merit selection of Federal judges, and he oversaw the appointment of forty-one women to the Federal bench—more than eight times the number of female judges sitting when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated...
...But, in one respect, this book is invaluable...
...There are, of course, many others who did not savor Bell's tour as the nation's chief law-enforcement officer...
...Bell's confirmation hearings were "pure hell" thanks to the anti-South bias of some unnamed Senators...
...In one chapter, for example, he announces that the Government is guilty of overregulation...
...For Bell, to view the case in any other light violated the constitutional command of even-handed enforcement of the law...
...By establishing the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bell also helped to rationalize and organize the dizzying array of statistics on crime in America...
...When the "power centers" in the White House tried to influence his choice of judicial nominees, Bell objected to this "politi-cization of the process of selection" and almost resigned...
...The National Labor Relations Board exists because workers cannot organize unions without Government support...
Vol. 47 • January 1983 • No. 1
