[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 3 (Thursday, January 8, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S190-S194]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              GRIFFIN BELL

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to a long-time, 
good friend and a great Georgian, Griffin Bell, who passed away on 
Monday of this week. Judge Griffin Bell was a native of America's 
Georgia. He was a distinguished lawyer in our State since 1947, when he 
passed the Georgia bar after completing just four quarters of study in 
his beloved Mercer Law School in Macon, GA. Upon graduation the 
following year, he entered private practice in Savannah. Appointed by 
President John Kennedy to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Attorney 
General of the United States under President Jimmy Carter, and as an 
attorney for President George H.W. Bush, Judge Bell has left an 
extraordinary legacy of courage, integrity, wisdom, and, yes, humor to 
our Nation and to my State.
  In one of the press reports this week, upon Judge Bell's death at the 
age of 90, one of his law partners, Richard Schneider at the 
distinguished Atlanta firm of King & Spalding, where Judge Bell 
practiced before and after his service on the Federal bench and as 
Attorney General, said:

       No novelist, not even Dickens or John Irving, could have 
     created a more memorable character than Judge Bell. He took 
     the role of being a lawyer and transformed it into a legend. 
     It is remarkable that every man and woman who spent even a 
     brief period with Judge Bell would cling to him and claim him 
     as their hero forever. That is how legends are made and 
     legends last forever. That will be the case with the great 
     Griffin Bell.

  I ask unanimous consent that the article from the Newnan Times-
Herald, in which the Schneider comments appear, be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     [From the Newnan Times-Herald]

           Heaven Is Greater With the Arrival of Griffin Bell

       Georgia is saying goodbye to one of our state's most 
     distinguished citizens. Griffin B. Bell, lawyer, judge, U.S. 
     attorney general and confidante to presidents, governors and 
     many others, died Monday. A public graveside service will be 
     11 a.m. today in Americus, where he was born. A public 
     memorial

[[Page S191]]

     service will be 11 a.m. Friday at Second Ponce de Leon 
     Baptist Church in Atlanta.
       When we think of Griffin Bell, some of the words that come 
     to mind are distinguished, integrity, professionalism, charm, 
     statesman, enduring. In reading some of the news accounts 
     reacting to his death, we heard words that help define this 
     Georgia giant.
       Said his grandson Griffin Bell III: ``He was ready to go. 
     We are just blessed to have him so long. He's a great man, a 
     great grandfather. We're going to miss him--everything was 
     checked off his list. . . . He was still running the show 
     until very recently . . . If he had another six months, he'd 
     still knock off four or five major projects.''
       Arlington Christian School
       Said law partner Bob Steed: ``If he took a position, he'd 
     take it strongly and defend it. But if someone improved it, 
     he was willing to give way. His ego didn't get involved with 
     his choices. . . . He was sharp to the very end. He told his 
     son that there must be a committee in heaven in charge of 
     dying, because it was taking so long.''
       Former Mercer University Chancellor R. Kirby Godsey said, 
     ``Griffin Bell was more than an outstanding statesman or a 
     great American; he stood as a first citizen of the world 
     whose voice and insights will shape human history for decades 
     to come.''
       ``No novelist--not even Dickens or John Irving--could have 
     created a more memorable character than Judge Bell,'' said 
     law partner Richard N. Schneider. He took the role of being a 
     lawyer and transformed it into legend. . . . It is remarkable 
     that every man and woman who spent even a brief period with 
     Judge Bell would cling to him and claim him as their hero 
     forever. That's how legends are made, and legends last 
     forever--and that will be the case with the great Griffin 
     Bell.''
       And finally, from former prosecutor and now CNN personality 
     Nancy Grace:
       ``I have known many, many judges during my legal career. 
     Judge Bell, without a doubt, was the most honorable of them 
     all . . . He will be missed sorely, but, as of this moment, 
     heaven has become even greater.''

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. In two short weeks President-elect Obama will be 
inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. I am proud of 
this moment for him and for our Nation. The new President will have my 
prayers and support. I believe it is appropriate to link in some small 
way the President-elect's great and historic victory to the courage and 
integrity of Judge Bell. In the 1950s and 1960s across the South and 
across our Nation as a whole, the country worked to implement the 
landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education. While serving as chief of 
staff to Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver, Judge Bell provided counsel 
to the Sibley Commission. This blue-ribbon panel held hearings 
throughout Georgia for the purpose of educating citizens on the 
inevitability of public school desegregation. In my view, his efforts 
on this commission were an important step down the path Dr. Martin 
Luther King, Jr. and others traveled that enabled Atlanta to become the 
city and community that it is today, for Georgia to truly become the 
empire State of the South, and for our Nation to elect our new 
President.
  After cochairing President Kennedy's successful Georgia campaign 
during his 1960 Presidential election, the President nominated Judge 
Bell to a position on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. To quote from 
his excellent biography provided by King & Spalding:

       Judge Bell was unquestionably one of the court's strongest 
     civil rights enforcers. He fervently believed in the rule of 
     law and had little patience for segregationist-minded 
     government officials seeking to evade or defy court orders to 
     deny African Americans their civil rights. In United States v 
     Barnett . . . Judge Bell voted with the majority of the court 
     in ordering the University of Mississippi to admit James 
     Meredith as a student and enjoined the governor from 
     interfering with his admission.

  I ask unanimous consent that the firm's biography of Judge Bell be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                         Bell, Griffin (1918--)

       The shadow of Griffin Bell looms large across the landscape 
     of jurisprudence in the United States. Over the course of his 
     distinguished fifty-five-year legal career, Bell has compiled 
     an impressive list of achievements, serving as the managing 
     partner of Atlanta's premier law firm, the chief of staff to 
     the governor of Georgia, the U.S. attorney general, legal 
     adviser to three U.S. presidents, the ``lawyer of last resort 
     for some of the nation's largest corporations,'' and, for 
     over fourteen years, an influential federal appellate judge.
       Griffin Boyette Bell was born on 31 October 1918 in 
     Americus, Georgia, to Adlai Cleveland Bell, a cotton farmer, 
     and Thelma Leola Pilcher Bell. A. C. Bell laid the foundation 
     for his son's future career in law and politics at an early 
     age, taking the youngster to numerous campaign rallies and 
     trials at the local courthouse. Fortunately, the boy's 
     intellect was more than sufficient to meet his father's 
     ambitions for him. He was extremely intelligent, graduating 
     from Americus High School at the age of fifteen. Bell then 
     attended Georgia Southwestern College and worked as a 
     Firestone salesman before being drafted by the army in 1941. 
     After completing Officer Candidate School, he served as a 
     company commander for more than 500 soldiers during World War 
     II, eventually attaining the rank of major. Bell credits his 
     time in the army as the most valuable management experience 
     he could have received for a career in the law. It was also 
     during this time period that he met his bride-to-be, Mary 
     Powell. The Bells were married for almost sixty years before 
     Mary's passing in the fall of 2000. Their marriage produced 
     one son, Griffin Jr., and two grandchildren, Griffin III and 
     Katherine. Judge Bell is now married to Nancy Kinnebrew Bell.
       In 1946, after receiving an honorable discharge, Griffin 
     Bell took advantage of the G.I. Bill by enrolling at Mercer 
     University's law school in Macon, Georgia. In addition to his 
     legal studies, Bell clerked for the law firm of Anderson, 
     Anderson and Walker and served as the first city attorney of 
     Warner Robbins, Georgia. In 1947, after just four quarters of 
     study, he passed the Georgia bar on his first attempt. One 
     year later, he graduated from Mercer with honors. Since that 
     time, Bell has received the Order of the Coif from Vanderbilt 
     University's law school and honorary degrees from several 
     other colleges and universities.
       Griffin Bell began his legal career with Lawton and 
     Cunningham, a historic Savannah law firm that once ``sued the 
     federal government to recover the value of the cotton that 
     Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman had burned on his `march to the 
     sea' '' (Murphy 1999, 29). In 1952, he left Savannah to 
     become a named partner of Matthews, Owens and Maddox, a law 
     firm located in Rome, Georgia. But he only stayed in Rome for 
     a ``spell,'' leaving just one year later to join the 
     prestigious Atlanta law firm of King and Spalding (formerly 
     known as Spalding, Sibley, Troutman and Kelly). Upon arriving 
     at King and Spalding, he immediately ``began to lead the firm 
     toward a more involved role in government affairs'' (Murphy 
     1999, 40). In 1958, after just five years, he became the 
     firm's managing partner and one year later was named chief of 
     staff to S. Ernest Vandiver, the newly elected governor of 
     Georgia. As chief of staff, Bell was the architect of the 
     Sibley Commission, a blue ribbon panel designed to conduct 
     hearings throughout the state ``for the purpose of educating 
     segregationists on the inevitability of public school 
     desegregation'' (Patterson 1977). The commission is 
     universally credited with being the vehicle that saved 
     Georgia's public school system.
       In 1960, Bell was asked to cochair Sen. John F. Kennedy's 
     presidential campaign in Georgia. He agreed to do so ``before 
     it was by any means certain a Catholic and a `liberal' on 
     civil rights could carry that state'' (Patterson 1977). In 
     one of their first meetings, Kennedy asked Bell whether he 
     would be embarrassed to campaign on behalf of a Catholic. 
     Bell replied, ``Not at all. But I am embarrassed for our 
     country that you would think to ask me that question'' 
     (Murphy 1999, 71). In the end, Kennedy won the election and 
     carried Georgia by a larger margin than in any other state. 
     Afterward, Robert Kennedy, the president's brother and new 
     U.S. attorney general, contacted Bell to inquire as to 
     whether he was interested in a position or appointment with 
     the federal government. Bell told him it was his 
     understanding that two judgeships might open up on the United 
     States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, at that time 
     the nation's largest federal appellate court, and that he 
     would certainly be interested in being considered for one of 
     them. President Kennedy gladly obliged, nominating the forty-
     two-year-old Bell for a judgeship on the Fifth Circuit on 6 
     October 1961. But instead of waiting for the Senate to 
     confirm the nomination, Kennedy decided to make Bell a recess 
     appointment because of ``the circuit's mounting caseload 
     problems'' (Barrow and Walker 1998, 29). The U.S. Senate 
     confirmed Bell's nomination by an overwhelming margin the 
     following spring.
       Griffin Bell brought a forceful personality to the Fifth 
     Circuit. A cross between Mark Twain and John Marshall, Bell 
     was plain spoken, witty, charming, politically savvy, and 
     extremely intelligent. He joined the court during one of the 
     most turbulent times in our nation's history. The country was 
     in the midst of a social revolution, and the Fifth Circuit--
     with jurisdiction over the Deep South states of Alabama, 
     Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas--was the 
     primary battleground in the struggle for civil rights. As 
     tensions rose to a boiling point, the Fifth Circuit was 
     called upon to dispense justice and maintain societal order. 
     Never one to sit on the sidelines, Bell wasted little time 
     entering into the fray and quickly became one of the court's 
     most respected and influential jurists. As a judge, he 
     unequivocally enforced the civil rights of black Americans, 
     served as a bridge between the activist judges of the court 
     and states' rights advocates, masterfully accommodated the 
     competing interests of warring civil rights litigants to 
     achieve commonsense solutions in the most complex of cases, 
     and was a leader in the fight to preserve neighborhood 
     schools on a nonracial basis.
       Judge Bell was unquestionably one of the court's strongest 
     civil rights enforcers. He

[[Page S192]]

     fervently believed in the rule of law and had little patience 
     for segregationist-minded government officials seeking to 
     evade or defy court orders or deny blacks their civil rights. 
     In United States v. Barnett (1963-1965), Bell voted with the 
     majority of the court in ordering the University of 
     Mississippi to admit James Meredith as a student, 
     enjoining the governor of the state from interfering with 
     his admission, and holding the governor in civil contempt 
     for attempting to do so. In Evers v. Jackson Municipal 
     Separate School District (1964), he reversed a district 
     court's dismissal of complaints seeking desegregation of 
     the public school systems of Jackson, Biloxi, and Leake 
     County, Mississippi, eloquently noting that schools are 
     not truly desegregated until ``inhibitions, legal and 
     otherwise, serving to enforce segregation have been 
     removed . . . [and black children] are `afforded a 
     reasonable and conscious opportunity to apply for 
     admission to any schools for which they are eligible 
     without regard to their race or color, and to have that 
     choice fairly considered by the enrolling authorities.' '' 
     In United States v. Lynd (1965), he authored an opinion 
     holding a state court clerk in civil contempt for 
     willfully disregarding a court order allowing blacks to 
     register to vote. In Turner v. Goolsby (1965-1966), Bell 
     crafted an innovative desegregation order placing the 
     school system of Taliaferro County, Georgia, into a 
     receivership after local officials closed down the 
     county's only white school and secretly arranged for those 
     children to attend schools in adjoining counties.
       One of Judge Bell's most important enforcement decisions 
     was United States v. Hinds County School Board (1969), a case 
     involving the development and implementation of desegregation 
     plans in thirty-three Mississippi school districts. This case 
     came about after the Supreme Court reversed and remanded a 
     Fifth Circuit order giving the state additional time to 
     desegregate, holding ``the continued operation of segregated 
     schools under a standard of allowing `all deliberate speed' 
     for desegregation is no longer constitutionally permissible'' 
     (Alexander v. Holmes County Bd. of Educ. 1969). In an 
     extraordinary move, the Court ordered the Fifth Circuit 
     immediately to fashion and implement desegregation plans for 
     each school district, even though the school year was already 
     well under way. Chief Judge John R. Brown wasted little time 
     in assigning Bell the difficult task of handling the case. 
     Brown's reasons for doing so were obvious to the other 
     members of the court. By that time, Bell had proven himself 
     to be a brilliant tactician and a deft negotiator. As the 
     ``man in the middle,'' he was adroit ``in the use of 
     compromise'' and ``had the ability to bring together opposing 
     sides, to find a common ground, and reconcile differences'' 
     (Barrow and Walker 1998, 28). A judge who frequently hunted 
     with Bell claimed that he was so persuasive ``[he could] talk 
     the birds out of the trees to sit on his shoulder'' (28). His 
     colleagues had no doubt that he could handle this complex and 
     unwieldy case. Bell did not disappoint. He began by summoning 
     all of the school superintendents to New Orleans for a 
     meeting. According to one witness, ``He read the riot act to 
     them--He told them they were desegregating next month whether 
     they liked it or not'' (Strasser 1977). After flashing the 
     ``big stick,'' Bell turned on his trademark charm. He spent 
     several weeks conferring with civil rights lawyers, school 
     board attorneys, and local officials about the details of the 
     respective desegregation plans and the manner in which they 
     would be implemented. This innovative approach ``drew praise 
     from all sides'' and helped safeguard ``the public's 
     perception of judicial even-handedness'' (Bass 1998a, 1505). 
     More important, the Hinds decision marked a turning point for 
     the Fifth Circuit's desegregation jurisprudence. In the past, 
     if a circuit panel found fault with a district court's 
     desegregation order, it would simply reverse and remand the 
     case with instructions to develop a new plan. In the 
     meantime, schools would remain segregated. After Hinds, 
     however, the status quo during desegregation litigation was a 
     desegregated school system.
       Judge Bell was the Fifth Circuit's leading critic of using 
     busing as a means of disestablishing the ``separate but 
     equal'' school systems of the past. Although Bell strongly 
     believed in both the legal and moral correctness of Brown v. 
     Board of Education (1954), that black children have a 
     fundamental constitutional right to attend school with white 
     children and receive the same quality of education, he did 
     not favor integration--that is, busing children several hours 
     across town to achieve ``a racial ratio [in each school] that 
     reflected the total school population in the geographic 
     entity'' (Murphy 1999, 129). In his opinion, busing had 
     nothing to do with equal protection and everything to do with 
     social engineering. Bell interpreted Brown as giving black 
     students ``freedom of choice to go to schools, primarily in 
     their own neighborhoods'' (129). In this respect, he favored 
     a strict neighborhood-school policy, with a majority-to-
     minority transfer policy that allowed students to transfer 
     to a school outside of their neighborhood so long as the 
     transfer did not have the effect of increasing the 
     majority of the students' race at that school. If 
     segregated schools still existed after the implementation 
     of this policy, Bell advocated pairing nearby schools 
     together as a means of further ``disestablishing the dual 
     school system'' (101). Although Bell's argument did not, 
     initially, carry the day, his valiant fight to preserve 
     neighborhood schools remains praiseworthy. Many historians 
     lavish praise on the activist members of the Fifth Circuit 
     for requiring busing, but the real-world consequences of 
     their actions have been devastating for public schools. 
     Bell believes that the decline of public education in the 
     United States is inextricably linked to the judiciary's 
     decision to impose ``forced integration and mandatory 
     busing'' on the schools: ``Anybody with one eye and half 
     sense should have known that busing would ruin them. The 
     neighborhood strengths were lost'' (132).
       In addition to his formal participation on the bench, Bell 
     also distinguished himself as an expert in the area of 
     judicial administration, establishing ``many of the Fifth 
     Circuit's innovative screening and expediting processes'' 
     (U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary 1977, 6). He held 
     several leadership roles in this area, serving as the 
     chairman of the Federal Judicial Center's Committee on 
     Innovation and Development (1968-1970), as a director of the 
     Federal Judicial Center (1973), and as chairman of the 
     American Bar Association's Commission on Standards of 
     Judicial Administration (1976). He also took time from his 
     judicial duties to serve as chairman of the Atlanta 
     Commission on Crime and Juvenile Delinquency (1965-1966).
       During his fourteen-plus years on the Fifth Circuit, Judge 
     Bell participated in over 3,000 cases and authored more than 
     1,000 opinions. His reputation as jurist was such that four 
     separate presidents (Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan) had 
     Bell on their short list of potential Supreme Court nominees. 
     But as the fall of 1975 approached, Bell was restless. The 
     intellectually challenging civil rights cases had come and 
     gone, and he now spent the majority of his time dealing with 
     ``a heavy load of criminal and habeas corpus matters,'' work 
     that he considered boring and dreary (Field Van Tassel 1993, 
     354). Around that same time, lawyers from King and Spalding 
     paid him a visit and asked him whether he would consider 
     leaving the bench and rejoining the firm. The offer was 
     tempting. Bell loved practicing law, and he missed working 
     with clients. After a few months, he informed his fellow 
     judges that he had decided to resign. They were taken aback 
     by his announcement. It was highly unusual for a federal 
     appellate judge to relinquish a lifetime appointment, and 
     Bell was, at that time, only the fourth judge to ever resign 
     from the Fifth Circuit. Although his colleagues were 
     disappointed by the decision, they were nothing but 
     complimentary of his service to the court. Judge Bryan 
     Simpson summed up their collective sentiment nicely, noting 
     that Bell ``was a tower of strength, and I think his strength 
     has been that he's been a balance wheel. He always took the 
     center ground, and he can draw people from either side when 
     we get in these real tough fights'' (Murphy 1999, 140).
       When Griffin Bell decided to step down from the bench, he 
     thought his career as full-time public servant was over. But 
     eleven short months later, everything changed. A childhood 
     acquaintance, Jimmy Earl Carter, had been elected the thirty-
     ninth president of the United States and selected Bell to be 
     his U.S. attorney general. Although he had no desire to 
     return to government service, Bell's patriotism was such that 
     he could not refuse a president's request to serve his 
     country. His selection, however, created a firestorm of 
     controversy, and several members from Bell's own party led 
     the charge to derail his nomination. After being subjected to 
     one of the most contentious Senate confirmation fights in 
     modern history, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted ten to 
     three, with one senator voting present, to recommend his 
     confirmation to the full Senate. On 25 January 1977, the U.S. 
     Senate voted seventy-five to twenty-one to confirm him. Later 
     that day, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger swore in Bell as the 
     nation's seventy-second U.S. attorney general.
       Griffin Bell has been called one of the greatest attorney 
     generals of the twentieth century. Under his leadership, the 
     Department of Justice had an active legislative agenda on 
     issues such as judicial administration, criminal justice 
     reform, and intelligence reform. Bell also helped reshape 
     the federal judiciary by overseeing the selection of 152 
     new judges and in the process appointed more blacks, 
     women, and Hispanics to the bench than any other 
     administration had up to that point. His primary 
     achievement, however, was ``rebuilding the Justice 
     Department as a neutral zone in government [and] . . . 
     restoring the integrity of the FBI and our foreign 
     intelligence agencies in the wake of Watergate'' (Barry 
     2000). At the time of Bell's resignation, in August 1979, 
     Chief Justice Burger remarked that ``[n]o finer man has 
     ever occupied the great office of attorney general of the 
     United States or discharge[d] his duties with greater 
     distinction'' (Murphy 1999, 302).
       In the years following his return to King and Spalding, 
     Griffin Bell has established himself as one of the country's 
     premier lawyers and most prolific rainmakers, bringing 
     numerous and profitable clients to the firm. Although he 
     handles a variety of complex legal matters, he is nationally 
     recognized for his expertise in conducting internal 
     investigations of high-profile corporate crime (for example, 
     E. F. Hutton check-kiting scandal; Exxon Valdez oil spill; 
     Dow Corning breast implant controversy). He has also received 
     a great deal of media attention for his pro bono 
     representation of Eugene Hasenfus, an American mercenary shot 
     down in Nicaragua while delivering arms to the Contras; 
     serving as Pres. George H. W. Bush's private attorney during 
     the Iran-Contra investigation;

[[Page S193]]

     and guiding the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games 
     through a congressional investigation into actions taken by 
     committee members during the bidding process.
       In addition to his private practice, Judge Bell has 
     continued to serve his country in a variety of leadership 
     roles. In 1980, he led the U.S. delegation to the Conference 
     on Security and Cooperation in Europe. He has also served as 
     cochairman of the Attorney General's National Task Force on 
     Violent Crime (1981); a member of the Secretary of State's 
     Advisory Committee on South Africa (1985 to 1987); a 
     director, and then chairman, of the Ethics Resource Center 
     (1986 to 1991); a member of the Board of Trustees of the 
     Foundation for the Commemoration of the United States 
     Constitution (1986-1989); vice chairman of President Bush's 
     Commission on Federal Ethics Law Reform (1989); a member of 
     the Webster Commission, which, in March 2002, issued its 
     report on Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) security 
     programs and Russian spy Robert Hanssen; and a member of the 
     ad hoc advisory committee established by Secretary of Defense 
     Donald Rumsfeld for the purpose of developing rules to govern 
     military tribunals (2002). During the Clinton impeachment 
     process, he was one of nineteen legal scholars asked to 
     testify before the House Judiciary Committee on the 
     historical origins of impeachment. In 1984, Bell received the 
     Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Award for excellence in 
     law, and he was recently named one of the 100 Georgians of 
     the century.
       Judge Bell's political clout remains considerable. In 
     recent years, this onetime Democrat has taken to endorsing 
     Republican presidential candidates. He lent his support to 
     Vice Pres. George H. W. Bush in 1992, Sen. Robert Dole in 
     1996, and Gov. George W. Bush in 2000. During the 
     presidential election controversy of 2000, Bell visited the 
     recount site and served as one of the Bush team's key 
     advisers. He also filed an amicus brief on behalf of the 
     American Center for Law and Justice in Bush v. Gore (2000). 
     After the election, Bell served as a member of president-
     elect Bush's transition advisory team for the Department of 
     Justice. Although these actions have no doubt raised eyebrows 
     in the Democratic Party, Bell insists that he is not a 
     Republican: ``I haven't switched parties, I consider myself 
     to be an independent'' (``Griffin Bell, Carter's Attorney 
     General'' 1996).
       Griffin Bell's life is an American success story. Born into 
     humble circumstances, he reached the heights of his 
     profession through a combination of talent, ambition, and an 
     indefatigable work ethic. More important, when positions of 
     power provided him with an opportunity to make a difference, 
     he consistently rose to the occasion. As a judge, his 
     ``intelligence and even-handedness in administering justice 
     guided the South and the nation through some of its most 
     perilous times'' (Barry 2000). With all of his achievements, 
     this is Bell's greatest legacy: his commitment to the rule of 
     law and the equal rights of all citizens.

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. There were many more important decisions in which he 
was involved, and I was privileged to study and learn from them while 
attending law school at the University of Tennessee.
  Judge Bell was nominated by President Carter and confirmed by the 
Senate on January 25, 1977, as the Nation's 72nd Attorney General. His 
force of character and common sense revived a Justice Department that 
suffered from the Watergate era. According to Terry Adamson, a law 
clerk for the judge when he was on the Fifth Circuit, a principal 
assistant for Judge Bell at the Justice Department and a long-time 
friend of his, he said in an article that also appeared this week in 
the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

       Bell recently told NPR reporter Nina Totenberg that his 
     effort to bring about transparency during his service at the 
     department was the core of restoring public confidence.

  Certainly, it was.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Adamson's article be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                             [Jan. 7, 2009]

           Hardworking Bell Leaves a Legacy To Be Appreciated

                           (By Terry Adamson)

       Judge Griffin Bell and I were breakfasting in the White 
     House mess in 1991 with my wife, who was then on President 
     George H.W. Bush's senior staff. The president heard Bell was 
     there and sent a message to visit in the Oval Office. It was 
     a visit among friends, and Bush and his wife, Barbara, at 
     Bell's invitation, were soon at Sea Island where they had not 
     visited since their honeymoon. Rounds of golf were played, a 
     return engagement for Bell followed at Camp David that 
     included golf with Bush and Arnold Palmer, and Bush soon had 
     Bell as his personal lawyer. For Griffin Bell, who died 
     Monday at age 90, that was normal.
       During his terminal illness, Bell's doctors told him to 
     establish a goal each day. He accomplished many during the 
     last six months, invigorated by the outpouring of visits and 
     calls of his lifetime of friends, and at peace after a 
     satisfying and long life. His mind stayed clear and vigorous 
     to the end. Former Atlanta Constitution editor Eugene 
     Patterson was one of those who told Bell in a call a few 
     weeks ago how ``the courage'' displayed by Bell and Gov. 
     Ernest Vandiver to bring Georgia within the legal 
     requirements of integration and save public education in 
     Georgia ``set my own bearing.''
       Bell was a new 43-year-old judge for just a few months on 
     the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals when he drew the case that 
     ended the discriminatory county unit system and changed 
     Georgia elections. He was soon embroiled in Mississippi Gov. 
     Ross Barnett's defiance of court orders to admit James 
     Meredith to the University of Mississippi. The Georgia and 
     Mississippi cases were two among about 3,000 cases in which 
     he participated and more than 500 opinions that he wrote. 
     These cases reflected his frequent and significant role 
     during his nearly 15 years as a judge in which he synthesized 
     the court's center, advancing civil rights. President John F. 
     Kennedy went on television in the midst of the Barnett 
     controversy to cite Bell and other southern judges as 
     courageous heroes.
       In 1977, Bell and President Jimmy Carter had a mission to 
     refurbish the Justice Department and FBI after the severe 
     tarnish of Watergate. He started and ended by boosting the 
     professionalism of the careerists in the department. When he 
     left, the esprit of the body of the men and women at Justice 
     was at an all-time high.
       As a critical ingredient of this mission, Bell earned the 
     respect of a cynical post-Watergate press corps. Seemingly 
     small things were part of his plan, such as posting on the 
     press room bulletin board his own daily logs showing his 
     every meeting and telephone call with anyone outside the 
     Justice Department from the day before. He enforced rules 
     such as restricting White House contacts to only the highest 
     levels of the department to minimize even the appearance of 
     political pressures on lesser officials. Bell recently told 
     NPR reporter Nina Totenberg that this transparency was the 
     core of restoring public confidence.
       While rigorous about his national security responsibilities 
     and proud of the first modern successful prosecutions of 
     spies, Bell also persuaded the intelligence community and the 
     Congress to trust the judiciary to oversee domestic 
     surveillance by authoring and passing the Foreign 
     Intelligence Surveillance Act. He recruited and persuaded 
     William Webster to resign a lifetime appellate judgeship to 
     become head of the FBI.
       Bell implemented Carter's campaign pledge to give 
     meaningful roles to minorities and women. African-Americans 
     as solicitor general and the head of the civil rights 
     division were among his first two recruits. At the beginning 
     of the Carter presidency, there were few minorities and no 
     women judges on the federal appeals courts, and few on the 
     trial courts. It was one of the highest priorities of Carter 
     and Bell, and for the first time in history, significant 
     percentages of women and minorities became federal trial and 
     appellate judges.
       As I watched Bell operate over the years, I was amazed not 
     only with the depth of his mind, but his laudable ability to 
     absorb and process the energy and knowledge of the law 
     clerks, aides, or fellow lawyers around him in order to 
     improve his own. The daily breakfast with other Justice 
     officials in the Martha Mitchell dining room was nothing but 
     fodder for his intellect.
       Initially labeled by some critics as a ``crony'' of Carter, 
     21 senators voted against Bell's confirmation as attorney 
     general. All of these opponents later publicly voiced their 
     support for him. Bob Dole wrote in the Washington Post that 
     his vote against Bell was one of his two worst votes in 
     Congress. The leader of that initial opposition, Sen. Charles 
     McMathias, a liberal Republican from Maryland, also recanted 
     ``the error of his opposition'' as he hosted Bell at his 
     Maryland farm before they together commemorated John 
     Marshall, the first chief justice, at a nearby rural burial 
     site.
       Bell was a people's person of the first order, who valued 
     his own common origins. Secretaries around the Justice 
     Department would be surprised when this attorney general 
     would wander into their far-flung offices, alone and 
     unannounced. It took no more than five minutes before Bell 
     had established a common acquaintance. On the day a massive 
     snowstorm engulfed and closed Washington, the Washington Post 
     called the offices of the Cabinet to see who was working. He 
     and I were the only ones there that morning, and I was off 
     making coffee, when the phone rang. He answered in his 
     recognizable and unassuming drawl. That was the lead of the 
     Washington Post story about who was working in Washington.
       Bell's most mentioned trait was his rich humor and wit. 
     Former Atlanta Constitution editor Reg Murphy wrote an 
     engaging biography laden with samplings of this wit: 
     ``Uncommon Sense: The Achievement of Griffin Bell.'' Bell 
     introduced a widely rumored aphrodisiac, rooster pepper 
     sausage, to Washington, headlined in a front-page story by 
     reporter Phil Gailey, ``Rooster Pepper has White House 
     Links.''
       Bell gave a still remembered acceptance speech in 1979 as 
     ``a candidate for President of the United States'' at the 
     Alfalfa Club, an annual banquet and mock political event in 
     Washington usually attended by the current president, the 
     Cabinet, military, judicial, political and business leaders. 
     He began in his

[[Page S194]]

     distinctive Georgia drawl, ``I would like to advise that 
     arrangements have been made for simultaneous translation.''
       He continued (paraphrasing Churchill's great statement), 
     ``Our motto will be to wage obfuscation. We will wage 
     obfuscation on the beaches and on the landing fields and in 
     the political arena of America. And when all else fails and 
     we can no longer obfuscate, we will tell the truth to the 
     extent we know it.''
       We celebrate with deep affection the life of this rare man.

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. When leaving the Fifth Circuit, Judge Bell returned to 
King and Spalding and distinguished himself as one of the country's 
premier lawyers.
  In closing, as I have paid tribute to his distinguished career, I 
wish to take a moment to pay tribute to this wonderful gentleman and 
friend. As a lawyer, I learned so much from him about the practice of 
law. As a Congressman and Senator, I learned so much about politics and 
public service.
  As a friend, I enjoyed our visits and conversations. His keen sense 
of humor has been compared to Mark Twain. As my good friend, Bob 
Steed--Georgia's very own ``Mark Twain''; a real humorist, columnist, 
and long-time law partner of Judge Bell--said this week of his wisdom 
and wit:

       If he took a position, he'd take it strongly and defend it. 
     But if someone improved it, he was willing to give way. His 
     ego didn't get involved with choices . . . He was sharp to 
     the very end. He told his son that there must be a committee 
     in heaven in charge of dying, because it was taking so long.

  That was Judge Bell.
  Griffin Bell changed the course of the history of our country. As a 
judge on the Fifth Circuit, his decisions regarding integration of 
school systems in Georgia and across the South were a model for 
integration throughout the Nation. In his role as Attorney General, he 
did much to restore the public's trust in the Department of Justice. He 
was a close personal friend of mine, and this is not only a national 
loss but a personal one as well.
  Mr. President, I have before me a commencement speech that he gave at 
Mercer University Law School in 2002. I ask unanimous consent that it 
be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Dr. Godsey, Congressman Chambliss, members of the faculty, 
     families of graduates, graduates and friends:
       I congratulate each one of you graduates on having 
     completed law school. Through much study and great effort, 
     you are about to become lawyers. You are about to become 
     members of a privileged class of Americans because as 
     lawyers, you are agreeing to serve your fellow Americans in 
     resolving those kinds of disputes which arise in a free 
     country.
       We have many rights and many responsibilities, and lawyers 
     are necessary to resolve the conflicts which arise from time 
     to time with respect to those rights and responsibilities.
       In 1835, a young Frenchman by the name of Alexis de 
     Tocqueville came to this country to study our prison system. 
     He stayed for two years and ended up writing Democracy in 
     America, an epic study of our democratic system. He reached 
     many conclusions, and two apply to you.
       First, he said that almost every problem that arises in a 
     democracy will eventually be resolved in the court system. 
     This was true then and it is true now.
       Second, he said that there was no aristocracy in America, 
     but that the nearest approach to aristocracy was in the 
     lawyer class. His thought was that lawyers occupy an unusual 
     and favored position in our system.
       So now that you are about to become aristocrats, I want to 
     give you a short lecture on behavior. We have an ample supply 
     of lawyers in our country, and some of the lawyers overlook 
     the obligation to serve others. They also distort the 
     privilege of practicing law by converting it into a mere 
     occupation. I was taught in law school that a lawyer had 
     ethical obligations well above the morals of the marketplace.
       We are privileged to represent others in resolving their 
     problems, but we have to do so with the public interest in 
     mind. We can advise and counsel and defend clients, but we 
     cannot advise or facilitate activities which violate the law. 
     We live in a very complex world where the channels of 
     commerce depend on tax laws, which are often unfathomable. 
     There is a fine line between tax avoiders and tax evaders. 
     Accounting standards can be evaded with the result that the 
     public loses confidence in our business corporations and in 
     the integrity of the marketplace. Lawyers are the watchmen on 
     the wall in the sense that they should say no to clients who 
     engage in such activities.
       One of the first duties of a lawyer is to remain detached 
     in any representation to the end that you do not facilitate 
     the breaking of the law. Always err on the side of doing 
     right. You and only you are responsible for your ethics.
       You should attach yourself to a mentor at the earliest 
     possible time. Those of you who will be trial lawyers--and 
     that will probably be about half of you--will not have the 
     privilege of being trained as barristers, as would be the 
     case in England, where you would have your training at an Inn 
     of Court. Inns of Court do not teach law, but they teach 
     lawyers how to conduct themselves and how to behave 
     themselves. Once they are certified by their mentors, as 
     knowing how to conduct themselves, they become barristers. If 
     you attach yourself to a mentor who has integrity--and I can 
     assure you that the older lawyers are always glad to help 
     young lawyers--you will absorb those qualities of conduct 
     that will make you into respected lawyers.
       The rules of conduct that you should follow in your 
     practice can be simply stated.
       1. To a client a lawyer owes undivided allegiance and the 
     utmost application of your learning, skill and industry as 
     well as the employment of all appropriate legal means within 
     the law to protect and enforce the interests of the clients. 
     You should not be deterred by any fear of judicial disfavor 
     or public unpopularity. Nor should you be influenced by self 
     interest.
       2. To opposing counsel a lawyer owes a duty of courtesy, 
     candor in the pursuit of truth and cooperation in all 
     respects--not inconsistent with the clients' interests. You 
     also must scrupulously observe all mutual understandings. 
     Your word is your bond.
       3. To the courts you owe respect, diligence, candor and 
     punctuality. You should also work to ensure the independence 
     of the judiciary and protect the courts against unjust and 
     improper criticism. In return, you should expect from the 
     judge and the courts that you be treated with respect and 
     that your dignity and independence as an officer of the court 
     be maintained. I have always thought it a mark of great 
     distinction that a lawyer in court can make a statement, as 
     they say, ``in his or her place'' to the court, without the 
     necessity of being put under oath. This is a mark of our 
     professionalism.
       4. In the administration of justice, you must abide by the 
     rules and conform to the highest principles of professional 
     rectitude, irrespective of the desires of the clients or 
     others.
       5. To the public you owe the duty of making certain that 
     the system for administering justice is fair and efficient, 
     and you should do what you can to improve the system.
       6. To the public you also owe the duty of seeing to it that 
     counsel is made available to those who cannot afford counsel 
     either on a pro bono basis or for such fees as can be 
     afforded.
       7. Finally, to our country you owe the duty of leadership. 
     You are in the class ``to whom much is given, much is 
     expected.''
       You should arrange your affairs as lawyers so as to have 
     time to be thorough and diligent. The bane of many lawyers 
     may be having too much practice. You do not serve any client 
     well when you lack the time to be thorough and prompt. You 
     are not required to take every matter that is presented to 
     you, but having assumed a representation, it becomes your 
     duty to finish the representation. Sometimes you will make a 
     bad bargain, but as professionals, you are still obligated to 
     carry out the representation.
       Someone asked one of my friends when we were in law school 
     why so many of us veterans were going to law school just 
     after World War II. My friend replied that we were hoping to 
     gain a part of the American dream. In most instances, my 
     generation has found the American dream. We have had good, 
     rewarding lives and we have taken great pride in our 
     profession.
       I am proud to be a lawyer. I am proud of the fact that my 
     son is a lawyer, and I am proud of the fact that my grandson, 
     a member of this class, is about to become a lawyer. Being a 
     lawyer is an honorable profession, and our obligation is to 
     maintain it with honor.
       I feel certain that all of you will have that attitude 
     toward being lawyers, and I wish you well as you go forth now 
     into the practice. I hope that each one of you will find the 
     American dream.
       Thank you.

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. I remember the day very well when Judge Bell gave that 
commencement speech at Mercer Law School because that day his grandson 
Griffin, III graduated from Mercer Law School, and my son Bo graduated 
from Mercer that same day. I was privileged not only to be there to see 
my son graduate from law school but also to share the dais with Judge 
Bell and to introduce Judge Bell to make that commencement address.
  He was a great American. He was a great Georgian. He was a terrific 
lawyer with unparalleled credentials, unparalleled integrity, and 
someone who is going to be missed by our State and by our country.
  (Ms. KLOBUCHAR assumed the chair.)

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