[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 157 (Sunday, November 9, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12227-S12228]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      NOMINATION OF BILL LANN LEE

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, late this week we will have an executive 
committee meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee. We will return to 
a nomination made by President Clinton, one that I think has become a 
source of major controversy. The gentleman's name is Bill Lann Lee. Mr. 
Lee has been named by the President to be head of the Civil Rights 
Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
  I had never met Bill Lann Lee until about a month ago when he came by 
my office. He made a very positive impression in the short time we had 
to speak to one another. Then I read his background and sat through his 
confirmation hearing, and I want to say that I hope Mr. Lee will get 
the chance he deserves.
  Bill Lann Lee is the son of Chinese immigrants who came to this 
country to New York virtually penniless. His mother and father started 
a hand laundry. He and his brother, who is now a Baptist minister, 
worked in that laundry with their parents. His mother sat, as he said, 
in a front window of the laundry every day at a sewing machine. His 
father was back doing washing and ironing, refusing, incidentally, to 
teach his sons how to iron. That's the major skill in a hand laundry. 
He didn't want his sons to know how to iron. He didn't want them to 
work there. He wanted them to think beyond the laundry.
  When World War II started, Bill Lann Lee's father, who was 36 years 
old and could have escaped the draft just by claiming an age deferment 
but did not do it, volunteered and went in the Army Air Corps and had a 
very interesting experience because he came back from the war to his 
family and said, ``That was a good thing to do, not just for the Nation 
but good for me.''
  For the first time, Bill Lee's father said, he was treated like an 
American, not like someone from China living in America. But when he 
came back from the war, as a returning veteran after World War II he 
found that job discrimination and housing discrimination was still 
very, very strong against Chinese-Americans. So he returned to his hand 
laundry but more determined than ever that his sons would have a better 
chance.
  When Bill Lann Lee reached college age, it happened that Yale 
University decided they wanted to diversify their student body. They 
gave him a chance and said come to Yale and see if you can prove 
yourself. Well, he sure did. He graduated from Yale with high honors 
and then went to Columbia Law School and graduated with high honors.
  With that kind of background, Bill Lee could have easily gone with a 
major law firm in New York, Los Angeles, wherever he happened to want 
to live, but he didn't. Bill Lee had learned a lesson in life, a lesson 
from his parents, and he decided that he wanted to fight 
discrimination. So for 23 years he has worked for the NAACP legal 
defense fund filing lawsuits when people are discriminated against.
  The interesting thing about it is, when you think of these lawsuits, 
many times they are the most controversial lawsuits you can imagine. 
You know the headlines in the papers when they start talking about 
housing questions and school questions and questions involving gender 
or race or religious persuasion. Those are tough cases. But out of 200 
cases that Bill Lee handled, only six ever went to trial. He was able 
to work out agreements in all the other cases.
  In fact, one of his leading opponents, Richard Riordan, who is the 
Republican mayor of Los Angeles, wrote a letter about Bill Lee and 
said, ``I was on the other side of a lawsuit, and I want to tell you 
something. We never would have settled it without Bill Lee there. He 
practices mainstream civil rights law.''
  I tell you, my friends, he is exactly the kind of person we need 
serving in the Department of Justice as the representative of the 
Office of Civil Rights. But I am sorry to report to you that in the 
last week some extreme political folks have set their sights to try to 
nail Bill Lee. They are trying to stop his appointment as the head of 
the

[[Page S12228]]

Civil Rights Division, and that is an unfortunate development. It is 
unfortunate because, first, all he is asking is to be judged fairly. 
That is all he has ever asked in his life. And second, the things they 
are saying about him really do stretch the truth.
  One of the leading conservative columnists in America, George Will, a 
man whom I really respect not just because he was raised and went to 
school in Illinois but because I think he is a pretty bright fellow, 
wrote a column in the middle of October and said we should turn down 
Bill Lee as ``a payback''--his words, ``a payback''--because the Senate 
Democrats, when they controlled the Judiciary Committee, turned down 
one of the civil rights appointments of a Republican President 10 years 
ago.
  Please, let us not do that to Mr. Lee. Let us not do that to the 
Senate. Let us give him his chance to stand on his own feet and have an 
opportunity to serve this country. And so I hope those of you who think 
that when the Senate goes home and the House adjourns our work is done 
will realize there are still many men and women waiting for 
confirmation and one of the most important and highest is Bill Lann 
Lee. He would be the highest-ranking Asian American ever appointed, and 
I am glad that the President has named him and I hope that we can find 
just two, just two Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee who 
will join the Democrats in supporting his nomination.

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