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.
Mar 10, 2021 · President Joe Biden named the longtime federal appeals court judge and onetime Supreme Court pick to lead an agency central to his domestic policy agenda. The vote was 70-30. Attorney General...
Mar 10, 2021 · March 10, 2021 WASHINGTON — The Senate voted to confirm Merrick B. Garland on Wednesday to serve as attorney general, giving the former prosecutor and widely respected federal judge the task of...
Mar 10, 2021 · March 10, 2021 3:32pm Updated Merrick Garland was confirmed as United States attorney general in a 70-30 vote. Drew Angerer/Pool via AP The Senate voted to confirm Judge Merrick Garland as U.S....
Attorney General | Years of service |
---|---|
Merrick Garland | 2021-Present |
Loretta Lynch | 2015-2017 |
Eric Holder | 2009-2015 |
Michael B. Mukasey | 2007-2009 |
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]
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.
During the Clinton administration, Judge Garland was chosen by Jamie Gorelick, the deputy attorney general, to serve as her top deputy. He oversaw the investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing, which led to the conviction and execution of Timothy McVeigh, and went on to supervise other high-profile cases that included the Unabomber, Theodore J.
Judge Garland has amassed decades of credentials in the law. He clerked for Justice William J. Brennan Jr., worked for years as a federal prosecutor and led major investigations into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and others before being confirmed to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1997.
US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of Califor nia, speaks at her weekly press briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2021.
Obama nominated Garland to the Supreme Court after a vacancy was created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. But Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, refused for months to hold confirmation hearings or the required vote in the chamber.
US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, speaks at her weekly press briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2021. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 20: U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters with Vice President Mike Pence in ...
Biden has selected Lisa Monaco, a former homeland security adviser in the Obama administration who has become a close aide to Biden, to be the deputy attorney general, according to a person familiar with the decision.
The attorney general is an executive office in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., that serves as the chief legal advisor and chief law enforcement officer for the state government and is empowered to prosecute violations of state law, represent the state in legal disputes and issue legal advice to state agencies and the legislature.
In 2021, six states are holding elections for executive, legislative, or judicial seats, including elections for three of the nation's 99 state legislative chambers, 15 appellate court seats, and two gubernatorial offices.
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"
Merrick Brian Garland (born November 13, 1952) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as the 86th United States attorney general since March 2021. He served as a circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1997 to 2021.
A native of the Chicago area, Garland attended Harvard Universityfor his underg…
President-elect Joe Biden selected Garland for the position of United States attorney general, with news of the selection coming on January 6, 2021. He was formally nominated by Biden on January 20, after Biden took office. In Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings, Garland vowed to oversee vigorous prosecution of those who stormed the United States Capitol, and other domest…
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; 1925–2016) was a director of volunteer services at Chicago's Council for Jewish Elderly (now called CJE SeniorLife). His father, Cyril Garland (1915–2000), headed Garland Advertising, a small business run out of the family home. Garland was raised in Conservative Judaism, the family name having been changed from …
After graduating from law school, Garland spent two years as a judicial law clerk, first for Judge Henry Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1977 to 1978 and then for Justice William Brennan at the U.S. Supreme Court from 1978 to 1979. After his clerkships, Garland spent two years as a special assistant to U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti.
After the Carter administration ended in 1981, Garland entered private practice at the law firm Arn…
Garland served as co-chair of the administrative law section of the District of Columbia Bar from 1991 to 1994. He is also a member of the American Law Institute.
In 2003, Garland was elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers, completing the unexpired term of Deval Patrick, who had stepped down from the board. Garlan…
Garland was considered twice to fill vacated seats on the United States Supreme Court in 2009 and 2010, before finally being nominated in 2016 by President Barack Obama for the seat left vacant by the death of conservative Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
In 2009, following the announcement by Justice David Souterthat he would reti…
Garland and his wife, Lynn, were married at the Harvard Club in Manhattan in September 1987. Lynn Rosenman Garland's grandfather, Samuel Irving Rosenman, was a justice of the New York Supreme Court (a trial-level court) and a special counsel to presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. She graduated from the Brearley School in Manhattan and cum laude from Harvard University and received a Master of Science degree in operations management from the MIT Slo…
• Garland, Merrick B. (1985). "Deregulation and Judicial Review" (PDF). Harvard Law Review. 98 (3): 505–591. doi:10.2307/1340869. JSTOR 1340869.
• ——— (1987). "Antitrust and Federalism: A Response to Professor Wiley". The Yale Law Journal. 96 (6): 1291–1295. doi:10.2307/796386. JSTOR 796386.