SPEECH
The Honorable Drew S. Days, III*
Solicitor General of the United States
Dean O'Brien, honored dais guests, trustees, faculty and fellow alumni, family members of the New England School of Law, and Beth Audet and Mark Gentile for the wonderful job you have done in connection with this evening.(1) I want you to know that the Attorney General sincerely regrets not being here this evening, but the tragic death of a Border Patrol agent a few days ago in the line of duty required that she be in San Diego today to attend his memorial service and to express her condolences in person to his family and friends. It is an honor for me to be able to represent her this evening at this marvelous event. I have no doubt that she will try hard to be with you on another occasion. Until then, I want you to know a little secret about Janet Reno. The Janet Reno you see on television and the Janet Reno you see in person are one and the same person. It is not a characteristic one finds in great abundance in public life in this country. She is the genuine article. I am sorry that she cannot be with you tonight to prove to you in person that what you see is what you get whenever she is around.
I think she would have had an exciting time knowing Anna Hirsch. In fact, the Attorney General likes to talk about her days in law school when someone came up to her and said, "Well, you're here in law school. I don't know what you're going to do with a law degree once you leave here." She has proved, I think, beyond anyone's imagination, what that law degree meant to her and now means to the country.
And I know she would also be excited to learn that you, the students here at New England School of Law, have, according to Thomas Wesner, taken her at her word and have gone into the schools in this urban center to help children learn and to provide them with role models and some inspiration to achieve. She would be just as excited as she could be to learn that. She is always giving talks to members of the Justice Department community about doing just that. And so I want to congratulate the school and the students for making that contribution--not after they get out--but while they are in law school, making it meaningful right now, not sometime in the future. So let me thank you on behalf of her and on behalf of myself for what you are doing.
I am excited to be here for a variety of additional reasons. There is such a warm feeling in this room; it reminds me of experiences I had in Philadelphia when I was teaching at Temple--the same sense of community, the same involvement of everybody, and the same tremendous pride on the part of all associated with the institution and what it means and what it is doing for this community, for the country, and for the students who have the benefit of studying at New England School of Law.
Being here also gives me a chance to relive my earlier existence as head of the Civil Rights Division as Assistant Attorney General under President Carter and Attorneys General Griffin Bell and Benjamin Civiletti. Perhaps the greatest pleasure is being able to convey to you, in the words of Janet Reno, her views on the theme this evening, the theme of this event, and indeed of the ABA during this year--E Pluribus Unum. It expresses her profound sense of her role as Attorney General and of the importance of the rule of law in our society.
Remarks of Attorney General Janet Reno
Law Day honors one of the central aspects of the American ideal, our shared commitment to the rule of law and to the resolution of disputes within the peaceful confines of a legal system dedicated to due process. This year's theme--E Pluribus Unum--"From Many, One"--captures the essence of what is best in our American tradition and the American legal system. No area of law embodies the principles of that phrase more than the area of civil rights, for civil rights is about making good on the American promise that though we are many individuals with many different histories and traditions, together we are one nation, one people, with one common destiny.
The Department of Justice has a long record of commitment to this principle. Attorney General Robert Kennedy's leadership in securing passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will forever stand as one of the noblest moments in the history of the Department. That law, which declared the end of legal segregation and discrimination in this country, has rightly been called the most important piece of civil rights legislation passed in this century. Although we have not yet fully achieved the high goals we set for ourselves in passing the Civil Rights Act, the Act has stood for the last three decades as a reminder of our nation's promise, and as a beacon marking the way toward fulfillment of that promise.
Today's Difficult Task
The challenges we face today in the area of civil rights are as complex and difficult as at any time in our history. We still have not fully conquered the discrimination against African-Americans that spurred the civil rights movement and led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and we have come to understand that civil rights is not just about relations between blacks and whites. It is also about ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to participate as a full member in our society. It is about ending discrimination against women, against African-Americans, against Hispanic-Americans, against people with disabilities, against Asian-Americans and against religious minorities, to name a few.
We are tackling these challenges at the Department of Justice under the leadership of Assistant Attorney General Deval Patrick--a son of the Boston area. The Civil Rights Division has led the way in enforcing laws that prohibit discrimination in employment, lending, housing, voting, and other areas, in order to allow each person in the country to live up to his or her full potential without having to face arbitrary and illegal hurdles on account of race, sex, national origin, religion, or disability.
But we in the Justice Department have an additional obligation. We must do a better job of explaining that the bulk of what we do in civil rights enforcement covers a wide range of problems facing this country. We must do a better job of explaining what it is we do in our civil rights program and why we do what we do. If we talk plainly about why civil rights still matters, we should all be able to find greater agreement than the conventional wisdom would have you believe.
Why Civil Rights Matters
So let me turn to why civil rights matters; why civil rights remains fundamental. I would like to tell you why we must continue to adhere to our great national bipartisan commitment to civil rights and why we must not shy away from the difficult and complex challenges that face us today.
I follow in a long, proud tradition of Attorneys General who were committed to enforcing our civil rights laws fully and ensuring that each and every American has a full opportunity to participate in all aspects of our civic life, from the decision of Frank Murphy--an early Attorney General and subsequent to that a Justice of the Supreme Court--to dedicate a group of attorneys in the Department to the enforcement of civil rights laws, to the efforts of Herbert Brownell and William Rogers to protect the right to vote, to the tireless, creative, and heroic work performed by Robert Kennedy and Nicholas Katzenbach in securing passage and enforcement of the landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s. My predecessors of both political parties have placed the highest priority on protecting the fundamental human rights of all Americans. We have continued this tradition.
In the Department of Justice today, civil rights issues continue to have the highest priority, for we know that the denial of civil rights can have a deep, drastic effect on how people live. Although public debate about civil rights often focuses on abstract philosophical issues, we understand that what makes civil rights important does not come from esoteric, elitist debates on the op-ed pages of our nation's newspapers. What makes civil rights important comes from the very real daily experiences of people who face discrimination, and from the way an accumulation of these experiences inevitably corrodes the ties that bind us together as a society.
In passing the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Congress understood that what was at stake was nothing less than ensuring every American the right to go through life with dignity: "Discrimination is not simply dollars and cents, hamburgers and movies; it is the humiliation, frustration, and embarrassment that a person must surely feel when he is told that he is unacceptable as a member of the public because of his race or color. It is equally the inability to explain to a child that regardless of education, civility, courtesy, and morality he will be denied the right to enjoy equal treatment, even though he be a citizen of the United States and may well be called upon to lay down his life to assure this Nation continues."
Thirty years after passage of the Civil Rights Act marked our commitment to ensuring equal opportunity, civil rights remains important for precisely the same reasons it was important then. Protecting these rights has a profound effect on people's lives. As the President has often said, "We do not have one person to waste in this country, and we are all diminished when any one of us, on account of a happenstance of birth or chance, experiences anything less than the full measure of his or her dignity and privilege as a human being and an American citizen." The fundamental moral imperative of civil rights is about making everybody count, about affording everybody the opportunity to make the fullest possible contribution to our society, our politics, our culture, and our economy.
Civil Rights Enforcement
It is this principle that drives the Department's civil rights agenda. In pursuing our agenda, we will never lose sight of what our work means to the real lives of real people. Think about what it means to spend every day defending the President--to be willing to give your life, to do so if necessary--and still be refused service, as black Secret Service Agents were recently at a major restaurant chain, simply because of the color of your skin. Think about what it means to see the manager rush to pretend to close the restaurant when he notices you coming. Think about what it means to a father who has to explain to his daughter why the waiter will not give her the same free birthday meal he gives to all of the other children. It is to stop practices like these that the Department has brought lawsuits like the Denny's case, which led to a major settlement designed to compensate people who had been discriminated against, and, most important, which will prevent discriminatory practices in the future.
That is also why we have stepped up our efforts to attack discriminatory practices in housing and lending. People who have worked hard to build their own job opportunities should not have to worry about taking a job in another city because housing discrimination makes finding a place to live a difficult, humiliating process. And people who work to achieve the American dream of owning a house should not have that dream deferred because mortgage lenders look askance at them simply because of their race.
As a result of our new fair housing testing program, the first of its kind among federal agencies, we have obtained extensive injunctive relief and a pool of over a million dollars to compensate proven victims of discrimination in a number of cases. We have also obtained effective settlements against red-lining and other discriminatory lending practices in four major cases involving lending institutions. These settlements will provide compensation for approximately 300 individual victims of discrimination, as well as injunctive relief to prevent such practices from recurring. Such stern, vigorous enforcement demonstrates our commitment to equal opportunity and provides very real redress for people who have suffered from discrimination.
It is the same principle that everyone should have an equal chance to participate fully in our society that underlies our enforcement of the laws against discrimination on the basis of disability. But these laws, like the Fair Housing Act Amendments and the Americans with Disabilities Act, do much more than simply vindicate our nation's high ideals. They have made a dramatic difference in the lives of persons with disabilities. It is fashionable these days in some corners to ask whether these laws are really necessary or worth it. Those who ask these questions simply do not understand what these laws are all about.
But all you have to do is look at the lives that disabilities rights laws have touched and you will see just how important these laws are and why we must never allow their detractors to put a price tag on achieving equality. Ask a deaf person who can use a TDD relay service to call a family member about the experiences in his or her life. Ask this person whether the Americans with Disabilities Act is worth it. Ask a person with mental retardation who lives in a group home instead of an institution whether civil rights is too costly. Ask a person who uses a wheelchair and is finally able to attend a town meeting in his or her local city hall whether the Americans with Disabilities Act is an "unfunded mandate." Or ask a hard-of-hearing grandmother, who for the first time can hear her grandchild's school play, whether disability rights laws are fanatical.
And above all, in each of these areas, public facilities, lending discrimination, and discrimination against disabled persons, we must make it clear that in advancing the cause of civil rights, we are advancing the well-being of all Americans. We are not telling restaurants to serve food for free. We are asking them to serve all paying customers. We are not telling banks to make bad loans. We are asking them to make loans that will build profits and solid returns for their depositors and their investors. We are not telling companies to hire unqualified workers. We are asking them to give the millions of superbly qualified persons with disabilities a chance to contribute. Enforcement of these civil rights laws, and other laws too, means more profits and more productivity for restaurants, banks, and businesses. It is not only good law--it is not only good moral conduct--it is good business and good economics. Civil rights laws not only serve to enrich the lives of individuals who are protected by them; they can also serve to make richer the bottom lines of businesses who abide by them.
Those of us in this field, and those of us who are dedicated to this cause, must do a better job of making people understand this fact. As we call out the names of those who do wrong and indicate the price they have paid for it, we must also be able to point to examples of those who have done right and show how they have profited from it.
Discrimination has always been irrational--it has always impoverished both the victim and the victimizer--and that is no different today. And that is a truth as old as time. But that must be taught and retaught to each generation that comes of age. Of course, in the end, our laws are not ultimately about profits or productivity, but about people--making people's lives better; making our children's lives better.
Too many fail to appreciate the essence of discrimination that people with disabilities face in their daily lives. At stake is the opportunity for people with disabilities to live their lives as fully as anyone else, as a part of the whole of society.
These are real problems, like the recent experience of Marca Bristo, the new Chair of the National Council on Disabilities. Marca, who uses a wheelchair, was visiting a newly-constructed museum with her six-year old son. As they took in the exhibits, Marca's son sat in her lap and they negotiated her wheelchair through the museum's corridors. Marca stopped to look at one of the exhibits and her son got off her lap and began walking around. Just then, a very large tour group came in, blocking her view of her son. She tried to wheel around the group to a place where she could see her child, but to no avail. When the group moved on, her son was nowhere in sight. She could only hear him crying out for her.
She traveled towards the voice and she soon saw her son at the end of a corridor, but there were a few steps between her and her child--between her and her ability to comfort her child. Such a simple barrier and so simple to deal with. And, yet, rather than deal with it, even once the problem was brought to the attention of the museum administration, one official responded by telling Marca that the museum "could not be responsible for her inability to be a better mother." Unfortunately, the museum administrator's attitude is all too common. Tragically, such attitudes can effectively exclude people from our society.
By excluding people from full participation in our society, these messages divide us from each other, and they leave far too many to lead lives of detachment and despair. At its base, civil rights is about making it unacceptable to exclude people in this way. It is about making clear that everybody counts. Civil rights matters because when we deny people these rights, we cause real harm to their lives. And, happily, the converse is true. When we protect civil rights we help ensure that people have a real opportunity to live full and productive lives.
Take the case of Nina Steiner. Nina is a high school senior in New York who happens to have a learning disability. Many young women have ambitions and Nina's is to teach music and dance to disabled children. To prepare for her life of service, Nina wants to attend a liberal arts college. As you know, high school students applying for college are required to take an examination like the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). But when Nina went to sign up for the test last year, she found out that, simply because she was disabled, she had only one opportunity to take the test in the spring--in March. Non-disabled students have two such opportunities--one much later in the semester. The effect was to give non-disabled students a substantial advantage in preparing for these ever so important tests and to impose additional obstacles in the path of people like Nina who had already been forced to overcome so many.
When we in the Justice Department heard about these practices, we sought to put a stop to them. Through negotiations with the Educational Testing Service--the group that conducts the SAT--we arranged for a special administration for disabled students in June to help level the playing field. Thanks to our efforts, Nina had the same opportunity as her classmates to take the test in the late spring. She took the test again in December and her college applications are pending. Thanks to the Justice Department's effort, the SAT--which has provided millions of young men and women with the keys to the doors of opportunity--is now open to Nina and the many other students who are disabled.
Fifty-five years ago, Frank Murphy established the office in the Department of Justice that would later become the Civil Rights Division. Mr. Murphy understood that if we are to remain a free society, government must always be vigilant to ensure that each and every one of us has an equal opportunity to participate in all aspects of our nation's economic, cultural, and civil life. "In a democracy," he explained, "an important function of the law enforcement branch of government is the aggressive protection of fundamental rights inherent in a free people."
In the half century since Mr. Murphy spoke, Attorneys General of both political parties have ensured that aggressive protection of fundamental rights has remained a central function of our Department. Today, thirty years after Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act, the Department of Justice stands firmly committed to full enforcement of the laws which protect those rights. In carrying out our duty, we will heed Eleanor Roosevelt's admonition to focus on the impact these laws can have on people's day-to-day lives.
"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?" Mrs. Roosevelt asked. "In small places close to home--so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet, they are the world of the individual person, the neighborhood he lives in, the school or college he attends, the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless those rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere."
The Administration's civil rights enforcement strategy aims to give these rights meaning "close to home"--to ensure that everyone is treated according to the fundamentally American ideals of equality, opportunity, and fair play. But we cannot do it without your help--and without the help of millions of ordinary people coming together to talk to each other, listen to each other, and breach the artificial walls that increasingly divide our society.
As Mrs. Roosevelt said, "Without concerted citizen action to uphold civil rights, we shall look in vain for progress." Committed members of the legal profession dedicated to the principles of civil rights are a vital part of the concerted citizen action that she spoke about. Without your help, all our professions of support for equality and opportunity will be in vain. With your help, we can one day truly live up to our basic American ideal of E Pluribus Unum--From Many, One.
Thank you very much.
* Drew S. Days, III, A.B. Hamilton College, 1963; LL.B. Yale, 1966, was nominated by President Clinton on April 7, 1993, confirmed by the Senate and sworn in on May 28, 1993. Prior to assuming his post as Solicitor General, Mr. Days was a Professor of Law at Yale University School of Law
1. This speech was delivered at the 1995 New England School of Law Barrister's Ball.