Marietta S. Robinson was confirmed yesterday by the United States Senate to serve on the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Robinson was nominated by President Obama in January 2012.
Robinson has practiced as a trial attorney for 33 years, handling a wide variety of complex litigation for both plaintiffs and defendants. She is also a Fellow of the International Society of Barristers, a position she has held since 1994, and served as its first female president from 2010 to 2011. In 2011, Robinson served as independent legal counsel to the Chair of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission in Liberia.
Previously, Robinson served for eight years as a federally-appointed trustee of the Dalkon Shield Trust, which disbursed over $2.4 billion to more than 300,000 claimants in over 120 countries. She is a Fellow in American Bar Foundation and Michigan Bar, and in 2000 was a candidate for the Michigan Supreme Court. In 2009, Robinson was an appointed member of the Judicial Advisory Committee for the Eastern District of Michigan and from 1985 to 1989 she served on the Michigan State Building Authority. She also served as a member of the Michigan State Bar Representative Assembly. Robinson earned her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law. She is the wife of the late James K. Robinson, a former president of NAFUSA and assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division.
The NAFUSA DC Planning Committee, chaired by President Jay Stephens, has announced the early plans for this year’s NAFUSA conference to be held at the J.W. Marriott in Washington, DC, September 26-28, 2013.
On Saturday morning, September 28, NAFUSA member Ted Olson, shown left, will anchor a panel on the Supreme Court. Olson served as the solicitor general of the United States, 2001-2004. He also served as the assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, 1981-1984. He is currently a partner in the Washington office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Earlier this year, Olson was named one of “The Most Influential Lawyers in America” by the National Law Journal.
In March, he argued the historic case of Hollingsworth v. Perry, challenging California Proposition 8, which overturned a State Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage. Yesterday the United States Supreme Court held the the case was not properly before the court. California officials had declined to appeal the trial court’s decision and proponents of Proposition 8 were determined by the Supreme Court to lack standing to step into the state’s shoes. The ruling left in place the trial court victory for two same-sex couples who had sought to marry, and is considered a major victory for Olson and David Boies, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs.
On Friday afternoon, following the morning CLE, the conference will hold a luncheon at the J.W. Marriott, and Charlie Savage, shown left, will once again join us, for the fourth year in a row. Savage will moderate a panel on drones. Savage is a Washington correspondent for The New York Times. Savage covered national legal affairs for the Boston Globe from 2003 to 2008. He received a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2007. His book about the growth of executive power, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, was named one of the best books of 2007 by both Slate and Esquire.
When the conference officially opens on Friday morning, Ronald C. Machen, Jr., shown right, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, will welcome conference attendees to Washington. Machen was nominated by President Barack Obama on December 24, 2009 and confirmed by the United States Senate on February 11, 2010. He also serves as a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee.
Before Machen’s appointment as U.S. Attorney, he was a partner at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr and practiced in the firm’s Investigations and Criminal Litigation group. Before practicing at WilmerHale, Mr. Machen served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia from 1997 to 2001.
Machen joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1997 after having served as a law clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge for the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Machen graduated from Harvard Law School in 1994.
During his career, Machen has been repeatedly recognized for his professional accomplishments. In 2012, he received a “Visionary Award” from the Legal Times for helping to advance the practice of law during his time as U.S. Attorney. In 2008, the National Law Journal named him one of the “50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America.” In 2007, The American Lawyer identified him as one of the “50 Most Promising Litigators in America Under the Age of 45,” and in 2006, the Washingtonian magazine named him one of D.C.’s “Top 40 Lawyers Under 40.”
On Friday afternoon, NAFUSA members will be invited for a “Day at Justice” in the Great Hall at Main Justice, where we will meet with senior DOJ officials. The planning committee is also working on two additional panels; one of government enforcement hot topics and one of criminal litigation ethics. Details will be announced soon.
Conference social events will include a Thursday cocktail reception on the Jones Day rooftop overlooking the Capitol, Friday evening class reunion dinners, a Saturday Potomac River cruise, and a concluding Saturday evening banquet.
NAFUSA member and former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh spoke at a June 24, 2013, program on U.S. and International Anti-Corruption Law at American University Columbus College of Law. The title of Thornburgh’s address was The Global Effort to Contain Official Corruption. He reviews the efforts being made to deal with official corruption, both at the country level and at the level of multi-national organizations. He then discusses a “checklist of the ‘nuts and bolts’ required for executing an effective anti-corruption program, ” and concludes:
Any message of quality of life in any country or region must include consideration of its quality of governance. In the long run, corrupt rulers cannot provide their constituents with fulfillment of their hopes and aspirations at a price they are willing to tolerate. Sooner or later, citizens worldwide will demand higher standards and more accountability from those who govern them. And that will hold out the promise of true progress for all.
Thornburgh also served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania (1969-1975), Governor of Pennsylvania (1979-1987) and Under-Secretary General of the United Nations (1992-1993). He currently practices with K&L Gates in Washington.
In this morning’s New York Times Op-Ed piece entitled Let Shooting Victims Sue, NAFUSA member Robert M. Morgenthau writes that gun manufacturers, distributors and dealers should be held responsible for reckless acts that send guns to the black market.
Morgenthau writes:
The Second Amendment right to bear arms is an important right. But the contours of that right must not extend to those who look away as their guns enter the hands of criminals and the mentally unstable. Congress should immediately repeal the 2005 gun immunity law, and let free-market incentives encourage responsible behavior by the gun industry.
Morgenthau, who was honored by NAFUSA in 2010 upon his retirement as the Manhattan district attorney from 1975 to 2009, served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, 1961-1970. In the photo above, Morgenthau is shown at the NAFUSA reception in New York in his honor, with (left to right) Ron Woods, Rich Rossman, New York DA Cyrus Vance, Jr., Robert Morgenthau, Rudy Giuliani and Otto Obermaier
On June 10, 2013, the Justice Department filed a petition asking the Merit Systems Protection Board to reverse the decision by Adminstrative Judge Benjamin Gutman in April that the Department had violated internal procedure in the disciplinary actions against AUSAs Joseph Bottini and James Goeke. The two assistants were accused of ethical violations in the corruption cases against the late Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.
The Office of Professional Responsibility had concluded that Goeke and Bottini committed professional misconduct in the Stevens case. The Justice Department overruled career DOJ attorney Terrence Berg who had determined the two had exercised poor judgment but not professional misconduct.
NAFUSA board member Kenneth Wainstein represents Bottini and said Berg “was dead right when he concluded that Joe had made honest mistakes that were not professional misconduct, and MSPB Judge Gutman was equally right to find a procedural violation when the Justice Department ignored that conclusion.”
John E. Clark, shown above with his family, one of the founding members of NAFUSA, was honored on Law Day 2013 by the San Antonio Bar Association with the Joe Frazier Brown Award of Excellence. The award is given annually and is named after a distinguished former judge, now deceased. The inscription on the plaque states “In recognition of outstanding leadership and service to members of the legal community and citizens of Texas.”
Clark, a life member and former president of NAFUSA, served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas 1975-1977. He is currently a partner at Goode, Casseb, Jones, Choate & Watson, P.C. in San Antonio. He mentioned that Doug Jones, who is featured in another post this month, spoke at the San Antonio Bar Association Law Day luncheon a few years ago on his prosecution of the church bombing case. Clark urges others to invite Jones to their bar meetings to talk about his extraordinary efforts in that historic case.
It has been widely reported that President Obama plans to nominate James B. Comey to replace Robert S. Mueller III as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Comey served as the Deputy Attorney General in the Administration of George W. Bush (2003-2005). He also served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (2002-2003). If nominated and confirmed, Comey will replace Bob Mueller whose term ends in September, 2013. Mueller is also a former United States Attorney.
On Friday, May 24, 2013, President Obama signed a Congressional bill bestowing posthumously the Congressional Gold Medal to the four victims of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing: 11-year -old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthis Wesley. NAFUSA board member Doug Jones, shown left, was invited to attend the ceremony at the White House. Jones, during his service as United States Attorney, was the lead prosecutor in the 2001 and 2002 convictions of two men for the church bombing, nearly 40 years after the 1963 bombing. The ceremony was also attended by the mayor of Birmingham and surviving relatives of the four victims.
In an interview with The Birmingham News, Jones said:
It’s hard to describe how special it is being there in the Oval Office with the first African American president, who really is in that office in part because of the deaths of those four girls. It’s indescribable what it means to me.
As reported by The Birmingham News, Jones called the Gold Medal and other commemoration activities in Birmingham this year important for several reasons. Events in Birmingham 50 years ago had world-wide significance, changing policy in this county, and inspiring human rights efforts elsewhere, Jones explained.
The lessons of Birmingham from 1963 show what can be done to change people’s hearts, people’s minds and give everyone access to civil rights. That was one of the pivotal points in the county’s history for basic civil rights.
Jones called the civil rights era a revolution that should be celebrated just as the nation continues to celebrate the American Revolution.
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Tamika Moore tmoore@al.com)
In an Op-Ed column in this morning’s New York Times entitled Stop the Leaks, former Attorney General William P. Barr, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick and former Assistant Attorney General for National Security and NAFUSA board member Kenneth L. Wainstein, published an Op-Ed joining the current debate over the disclosure that the Justice Department obtained the telephone records of Associated Press journalists, stating:
As former Justice Department officials who served in the three administrations preceding President Obama’s, we are worried that the criticism of the decision to subpoena telephone toll records of A.P. journalists in an important leak investigation sends the wrong message to the government officials who are responsible for our national security.
While neither we nor the critics know the circumstances behind the prosecutors’ decision to issue this subpoena, we do know from the government’s public disclosures that the prosecutors were right to investigate this leak vigorously. The leak — which resulted in a May 2012 article by The A.P. about the disruption of a Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner — significantly damaged our national security.
As for the process which led to a warrant for telephone toll log records for about 20 phone lines that the leaker might have used in conversations with A.P journalists, the former DOJ officials argued:
The decision was made at the highest levels of the Justice Department, under longstanding regulations that are well within the boundaries of the Constitution. Having participated in similar decisions, we know that they are made after careful deliberation, because the government does not lightly seek information about a reporter’s work. Along with the obligation to investigate and prosecute government employees who violate their duty to protect operational secrets, Justice Department officials recognize the need to minimize any intrusion into the operations of the free press.
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