Aug 23, 2021 · Attorney General Merrick B. Garland was sworn in as the 86 th Attorney General of the United States on March 11, 2021. As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Garland leads the Justice Department’s 115,000 employees, who work across the United States and in more than 50 countries worldwide.
United States Attorney General | |
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Flag of the United States Attorney General | |
Incumbent Merrick Garland since March 11, 2021 | |
United States Department of Justice | |
Style | Mr. Attorney General (informal) The Honorable (formal) |
Barbara Underwood (Acting) | 2018 |
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Eric Schneiderman | 2011 – 2018 |
Andrew M. Cuomo | 2007 – 2010 |
Eliot Spitzer | 1999 – 2006 |
Dennis Vacco | 1995 – 1998 |
Office and current official | Salary |
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Attorney General of New York Letitia James | |
New York Secretary of State Robert Rodriguez | |
New York Public Service Commission James Alesi | $127,000 |
New York Commissioner of Agriculture Richard A. Ball | $120,800 |
CIA | |
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Stands for | Central Intelligence Agency |
Introduction | The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the United States federal government, tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world. |
The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United Stateson all legal matters. The attorney general is a statutory member of the Cabinet of the United States.
The title "attorney general" is an example of a noun (attorney) followed by a postpositive adjective(general).[8]". General" is a description of the type of attorney, not a title or rank in itself (as it would be in the military).[8]
On September 17, President Bush announced that Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ Civil Division Peter Keisler would become acting attorney general, pending a permanent appointment of a presidential nominee.
The United States Attorney General is the head of the United States Department of Justice concerned with legal affairs and is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government .The Attorney General is considered to be the chief lawyer of the U.S. government.
President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated Garland to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in March 2016 to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. However, the Republican Senate majority refused to hold a hearing or vote on his nomination.
On February 13, 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died. Later that day, Senate Republicans led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement that they would not consider any nominee put forth by Obama, and that a Supreme Court nomination should be left to the next President of the United States. President Obama responded that he intended to "fulfill my constitutional duty to appoint a judge to our highest court," and that there was no "well established tradition" that a president could not fill a Supreme Court vacancy during the U.S. President's last year in office.
Garland's nomination lasted 293 days (the longest to date by far), and it expired on January 3, 2017, at the end of the 114th Congress. Eventually, President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated and appointed Neil Gorsuch to the vacant seat. In March 2021, President Joe Biden appointed Garland as Attorney General.
Early life and education. Merrick Brian Garland was born on November 13, 1952, in Chicago. He grew up in the northern Chicago suburb of Lincolnwood. His mother Shirley ( née Horwitz) was a director of volunteer services at Chicago 's Council for Jewish Elderly (now called CJE SeniorLife).
Garland graduated from Harvard in 1974 as class valedictorian with an A.B. summa cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa . Garland then attended Harvard Law School. During law school, Garland was a member of the Harvard Law Review.
Garland is considered a judicial moderate and a centrist. Garland has been described by Nina Totenberg and Carrie Johnson of NPR as "a moderate liberal, with a definite pro-prosecution bent in criminal cases". Tom Goldstein, the publisher of SCOTUSblog, wrote in 2010 that "Judge Garland's record demonstrates that he is essentially the model, neutral judge. He is acknowledged by all to be brilliant. His opinions avoid unnecessary, sweeping pronouncements." Garland has a reputation for collegiality and his opinions rarely draw a dissent. As of 2016, Garland had written just fifteen dissents in his two decades on the court, fewer than his colleague Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote some 17 dissents over the previous decade.
During Garland's tenure, the D.C. Circuit reviewed cases arising from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. In al Odah v. United States (2003), a panel that included Garland unanimously held that federal courts could not hear challenges from Guantanamo detainees. In July 2011, Garland wrote for the unanimous panel when it rejected Guantanamo detainee Moath Hamza Ahmed al Alawi 's petition for habeas corpus. In Parhat v. Gates (2008), Garland wrote for a panel that unanimously overturned the Combatant Status Review Tribunal 's determination that a captured Uyghur was an enemy combatant. In Saleh v. Titan Corp. (2009), Garland dissented from the court's holding that former Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison could not sue private military contractors who participated in torture and prisoner abuse. Garland wrote that the suit should be allowed to proceed because "no act of Congress and no judicial precedent" immunized the contractors from tort liability, the Federal Tort Claims Act specifically excludes contractors, and tort liability would not interfere with government operations.
The United States attorney general (AG) leads the United States Department of Justice, and is the chief lawyer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all legal matters. The attorney general is a statutory member of the Cabinet of the United States.
Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789 which, among other things, established the Office of the Attorney General. The original duties of this officer were "to prosecute and conduct all suits in the Supreme Court in which the United States shall be concerned, and to give his advice and opinion upon questions of law when required by the president of the United States, or when requested by the heads of any of the departments". Some of these duties have since been transferred to the U…
It is the practice for the attorney general, along with the other Cabinet secretaries and high-level political appointees of the President, to tender a resignation with effect on the Inauguration Day (January 20) of a new president. The deputy attorney general is also expected to tender a resignation, but is commonly requested to stay on and act as the attorney general pending the confirmation by the Senate of the new attorney general.
U.S.C. Title 28, §508 establishes the first two positions in the line of succession, while allowing the attorney general to designate other high-ranking officers of the Department of Justice as subsequent successors. Furthermore, an Executive Order defines subsequent positions, the most recent from March 31, 2017, signed by President Donald Trump. The current line of succession is:
1. United States Deputy Attorney General
• Executive Order 13787 for "Providing an Order of Succession Within the Department of Justice"