Opinion: He'll undo decades of progress
Sessions will undo decades of progress
Story highlights
- Laura Coates: Sessions' appointment as AG is latest signal of an impending ideological shift
- President-Elect Trump's choice will roll back progress made under Holder and Lynch
Laura Coates is a CNN legal analyst. She is a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Follow her @thelauracoates. The views expressed are her own.
(CNN)The inevitable confirmation of Sen. Jeff Sessions -- Donald Trump's nominee to be attorney general as the successor of Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch,
the first African-American male and female to hold that office, will
slow, if not halt, the momentum gained during the last eight years to
reform our criminal justice system.
Holder and Lynch prioritized combating racial profiling and selective policing within communities of color.
Laura Coates
In
a twist of fate, by contrast, Sen. Sessions' judicial appointment by
President Reagan to the federal bench stalled in the Senate Judiciary
Committee -- the very committee on which Sessions now sits. Their
refusal to confirm him was largely the result of a number of racially charged statements Sessions allegedly made in the 1980s.
But
a man who, because of those statements, was previously deemed unfit to
preside over a court of law, may now preside over the Department of
Justice, placing the future of any progress made on Holder's and Lynch's
watch in doubt.
Sessions'
statements will most assuredly be used as Democratic fodder during his
confirmation hearing. But with a Republican majority, the confirmation
hearing will largely be a formality.
His
rhetoric will, however, have a big impact on minority perceptions of
the prominent civil rights agenda of the Department of Justice, which
has gained increased visibility and scrutiny in an era of publicized
police shootings.
Under
Attorneys General Holder and Lynch, the Department of Justice has made
powerful strides to restore racial minorities' faith in the criminal justice system.
They
acted with an eye toward reversing the devastating impact that
President Bill Clinton's omnibus crime bill had on communities of color,
and reducing the astronomical incarceration rate that resulted from
harsher penalties imposed for possession and distribution of crack
cocaine (more prevalent in economically disadvantaged communities of
color) than those imposed for powder cocaine (which was more prevalent
within affluent white communities).
Yet
even under successive African-American attorneys general, the widely
publicized use of excessive and deadly force by police officers against
unarmed black men, and the seeming inability of local prosecutors to
secure convictions against those officers, has all but depleted the faith of communities of color in the department's ability achieve its mission.
Indeed,
the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division was intended to act
as a backstop against failed state prosecutions and serve as a neutral
advocate for communities who feared that the objectivity of local
prosecutors would be compromised by personal relationships or
prejudices.
But
with each failure to indict, mistrial and acquittal, the department has
been criticized for its lack of effectiveness to ensure justice for
communities of color.
Still,
Holder and Lynch were vocal about their intolerance of civil rights
violations. They were vocal even when they recognized the limitations on
their ability to prosecute such violations under a body of Supreme
Court precedent that is overwhelmingly deferential to police officers'
assessment of the appropriate amount of force to use.
The
perception of a powerful and conscientious watchdog in the Justice
Department's top job gave communities hope for the future and tempered
the backlash in response to perceived miscarriages of justice.
Surely
Jeff Sessions, a man accused of calling prominent Civil Rights groups
like the NAACP "un-American," and condemning the Klu Klux Klan for
supposed marijuana use (rather than its legacy of hate), will further
undermine the African-American community's faith that his department
will act in -- let alone prioritize -- the interests of communities of
color.
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But
if the presidential election has taught us anything, it is that
offensive rhetoric, perhaps even 30 years removed, may be wholly
irrelevant to people who prioritize other issues more.
Frankly,
it remains to be seen what types of criminal prosecutions Sen. Sessions
will indeed prioritize, but he has already shown his hand as a
political operator. Remember when then-candidate Trump promised to instruct
his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate
Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton? Sen. Sessions has
already called for a deeper investigation into the Clinton Foundation. Attorney General Sessions would have prosecutorial power.
More than anything, Sessions' appointment is an obvious forecast of the impending ideological shift across multiple branches of government.
With
one Supreme Court vacancy in hand, and perhaps another two in the bush,
Sessions' nomination signals that President-elect Trump is prioritizing
a reversion back to a time when America, and its justice system, was
"great." Sen. Session reiterated that same message on Trump's campaign
trail. When it comes to prosecuting civil rights violations, let's hope
Sen. Sessions' reference point of greatness is at least in this
century.
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