    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [August 9, 1999]
    [Pages 1416-1420]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the American Bar Association in Atlanta, Georgia
    August 9, 1999

        Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I want to say to all of
    you how very grateful I am to be here today at the American Bar
    Association, and especially under the leadership of my long-time friend
    Phil Anderson. I'm sure you could see
    there was a sort of an Arkansas tilt to a lot of the people who were
    introduced here today. [Laughter] Bruce Lindsey used to be one of his law partners. He even had his
    minister here. [Laughter]
        What you may not know is, the reason I'm here is that I got beat for
    Governor in 1980, and I was the youngest former Governor in the history
    of America. I had extremely limited career prospects, and Phil
    Anderson is the only guy in Arkansas that
    offered me a job. [Laughter] He's either a great prognosticator or a
    good gambler--[laughter]--and he's done a superb job.

    [[Page 1417]]

        Let me say, seriously, how very much I appreciate the remarks that
    he made on the issue of gun safety at the
    outset of your convening here. It's a very important issue to the
    Attorney General and me and, of course, to
    Atlanta's wonderful mayor, Bill Campbell, and
    all of those who have struggled to make our streets safer. We're honored
    to be here. I think the Lieutenant Governor of Georgia and the secretary of state are
    here, and I thank them for being here.
        I want to join--I know that they've already been introduced, but
    Congressman John Lewis and Andy Young and Hank Aaron have been all
    very good friends to me and to Hillary over the years, and I'm
    profoundly honored by their presence here and their contributions to our
    country. I thank you all for being here.
        I want to thank all the people from the Cabinet: Secretary
    Slater, who is also a native son of our
    State; and the Attorney General for coming with
    us; and Mr. Podesta. But I want to say a
    special word of appreciation to Chuck Ruff; this, I think, is his last day as the White House
    Counsel. Actually, I think Friday was his last day, but I made him come
    with me today. [Laughter] He has demonstrated throughout his career, in
    many positions of public trust and in private practice, with
    extraordinary power and dignity, a ferocious ability to be a legal
    advocate and an even deeper devotion to the Constitution and laws of the
    United States. He is a magnificent human being, and the United States
    and his President will always be in his debt. Thank you, Mr. Ruff.
        Several of you were at the White House last month when we celebrated
    the 35th anniversary of President Kennedy's historic call to the legal
    community to advance the cause of civil rights. We talked then about the
    role our lawyers must play in building one America, renewing our
    commitment to combat discrimination, to revitalize our poorest
    communities, to encourage diversity in the legal profession and all its
    institutions, and to continue the legal community's commitment to pro
    bono work.
        This has been very important to me and to my family. A lot of you
    know that Hillary was formerly the
    chair of the ABA's committee on women in the profession and the chair of
    the Legal Services Corporation. We have lived with these issues for
    almost 30 years now. And I want to thank the ABA for working with our
    initiative for one America, headed by Ben Johnson in the White House, who is also here today, to launch a
    national drive to increase diversity in all sectors of the legal
    profession.
        I also want to thank your incoming president, William Paul, for his efforts to raise $1 million for aid for
    the ABA scholarship for minority students and for his very generous
    contribution to kick off the drive.
        I know that you are also committed to ensuring that our legal
    profession serves all Americans equally. I've asked Congress to fund my
    request for the Legal Services Corporation. Phil has already given it a good plug, and I can hardly compete
    with birthday cake. [Laughter] But we need your help. I've had to fight
    for the Legal Services Corporation every year since 1995, and I am happy
    to fight for it again, but I'll have a lot more success if they know
    that all of you from all the States, from both political parties,
    understand the importance of its preservation and its vital role.
        I also want to ask you to work with us to make our Federal
    sentencing guidelines fairer, to correct some of the discrepancies in
    sentencing for similar crimes. This is an issue that most people in
    public life are reluctant to discuss, because there is always another
    election coming up and no one wants to be judged soft on crime and
    because there are always exceptions which can be made to seem the rule.
        But I think every person in our criminal justice system, from the
    members of the Supreme Court to the Attorney General, right through the
    ranks, knows that there are certain inequities in these sentencing
    guidelines that cannot be countenanced when measured against the
    standards of justice, fairness, or our common interest in having the
    safest possible society. So I ask you to help. You cannot expect the
    elected officials to deal with this alone, but if you give them the
    support they need and the evidence they need and the arguments they
    need, we may be able to continue to improve this system.
        We have the lowest crime rate in this country in 26 years. We should
    now be focusing on making this the safest big country in the entire
    world. But we can only do it if we are not only making this country
    safer but fairer and more decent and more just. And like most everybody
    else that's had experience with this, I am absolutely convinced we can
    continue to remove the inequities from the sentencing guidelines without
    seeing the crime rate go up or increasing the number of innocent
    victims. But we need your help to do it.

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        Finally, I'd like to ask for your support in another goal that is
    critical to building one America, and that is establishing a judiciary
    that is both strong and vibrant, that is both fair and diverse. Having a
    judiciary that reflects both excellence and diversity is critical to
    equal justice under the law, to safe streets broadly supported by the
    public, and to building one America. It is also a very important part of
    America setting an example for the rest of the world.
        Your president mentioned that you have representatives here from
    over 50 countries. And when he said it, it put me to thinking that I
    have spent an inordinate amount of the time that you gave me to be
    President in the last 6\1/2\ years worrying about wars and rumors of
    wars and conflicts that spread from Northern Ireland to the Middle East
    to the Balkans to Africa to Kashmir. All across the world, on every
    continent, people continue to fight each other. And the roots of their
    fighting are their racial, their ethnic, and their religious
    differences; people who can't help looking at other people who are
    different from them and seeing someone who is alien; people who do not
    see past the color or the faith to the common humanity, which is far
    more important than that which divides us.
        If the United States is going to be a force for good in the 21st
    century, we must continue to be better here at home. And we cannot
    expect everyone else in our society to be better unless those of us in
    the Government set a good example. Anybody who has ever been in a
    courtroom, either as an advocate or a client, knows that if you are in
    court, the judge is the most important person in the world. And to have
    a judiciary that reflects the diversity of America, as well as its
    commitment to equal justice under law and to professional excellence, is
    a profoundly important national goal.
        If I might, I'd like to take just a moment to pay tribute to a man
    whose life and career were a testament to these objectives, Judge Frank
    Johnson. Few Americans struck so many
    blows for equal justice. I was honored to award him the Presidential
    Medal of Freedom in 1995. We all miss him, but our Nation is better
    because he lived and served.
        When I leave you tonight, I go to honor with another Presidential
    Medal of Freedom, another American whose commitment to equal justice and
    to world peace are unequal, President Jimmy Carter. Among President Carter's many and varied contributions
    to our national life is his record of support for civil rights and for
    diversity and excellence on the Federal bench. I have worked hard to
    build on that record.
        I'm proud that the judges I have appointed during my tenure are the
    most diverse group in American history. Nearly half are women and
    minorities; more than half the current judicial nominees are. But they
    have shattered the destructive myth that diversity and quality do not go
    hand in hand. In fact, thanks to your committee, my appointees have
    garnered the highest percentages of top ABA ratings of any President in
    nearly 40 years.
        It is against this backdrop that I tell you about two historic
    nominations to the Federal bench. It's difficult to believe that in
    1999, despite the fact that more African-Americans live in the fourth
    circuit than any other appellate jurisdiction, the U.S. Court of Appeals
    for the Fourth Circuit has never had an African-American judge. On
    Thursday, we took steps to remedy that, when I nominated Judge James
    Andrew Wynn, a highly respected judge on
    the North Carolina Court of Appeals, to serve as the first African-
    American judge ever on the fourth circuit.
        I was also proud to announce another first--in some ways, given the
    history of the last 30 years, even more hard to believe--when I
    nominated Judge Ann Williams, a Federal trial
    judge in Chicago, known throughout the bar for her talent and
    dedication, to become the first African-American judge ever to serve on
    the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
        Now, both Judge Wynn and Judge
    Williams will make outstanding contributions to
    our courts and to our country. But first, they must be confirmed. And
    recent experience shows this can be an unnecessarily long and grueling
    process that I believe serves neither the judiciary nor our Nation.
        Judge Johnson once said, the hallmark of any civilized society lies
    precisely in its ability to do justice. But we cannot expect our society
    to do justice without enough judges to handle the rising number of cases
    in our courts. Despite the high qualifications of my nominees, there is
    a mounting vacancy crisis in the courts.
        During the first 3 years of our administration, we made tremendous
    progress in reducing the number of judicial vacancies. But the progress
    came to a screeching halt in 1996, a presidential election year, when
    judges became grist for the

    [[Page 1419]]

    mill of partisan politics. In that year, only 17 judges were confirmed,
    and for the very first time in 40 years, not a single circuit court
    judge was confirmed by the Senate.
        The result was a crisis so severe that last year, Supreme Court
    Chief Justice Rehnquist warned that
    vacancies in our court could actually undermine our legal system's
    ability to fairly administer justice. In response to this alarm, the
    Senate worked with us last year, and under the leadership of Senator
    Orrin Hatch, in a bipartisan fashion, we were
    able to fill 65 vacancies in our Federal courts. But no sooner had we
    begun to remedy the rising emergency then, once again, the politics of
    the Senate began to stop the confirmation process in its track.
        Consider: this year alone I have nominated 61 judicial candidates;
    16 of the 61 are due to fill vacancies in jurisdiction among the 21 that
    have been declared judicial emergencies because of the caseload backlog
    and the length of vacancy. I will nominate candidates for the other five
    positions this fall, when the Senate comes back.
        Now, during this period in which I have nominated 61 candidates, the
    Senate has confirmed only 11, and only 13 more have been reported out of
    committee; 37 are still stuck there. There are only 16 vacancies on the
    Federal bench for which I have made no nominations, and I believe that
    is an historic low, because of the time it takes to do the FBI checks,
    the background checks, and run all the traps that modern life seems to
    require. Nine of the 13 candidates currently voted out of committee, but
    not voted on in the Senate, are women or minorities.
        This year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of President Truman's
    appointment of the first African-American to the Court of Appeals, the
    highly respected William H. Hasty; and the 65th anniversary of President
    Roosevelt's appointment of Florence Allen to be the first woman to serve
    on an appellate court. We should commemorate these occasions by building
    on them with qualified people. We should honor the tradition of service.
    We should not--not; I repeat, not--have another replay of 1996. The
    worst effects of the slowdown are making themselves felt across our
    country. Exploding civil and criminal court dockets affect the lives of
    tens of thousands of Americans. They strain our justice system to the
    breaking point.
        For civil litigants, we know that justice delayed can be justice
    denied. For criminal cases, we clearly need the most rapid possible
    action. The Attorney General was talking to me on
    the way in about how we had succeeded in getting the crime rate down.
    But we had to have enough judges on the bench to take time in each of
    these cases to make the right kind of sentencing decisions if we want
    the criminal justice system to continue to work in a way that is both
    fair and effective.
        We simply cannot afford to allow political considerations to keep
    our courts vacant and to keep justice waiting. All of you know, I think,
    that I have worked very hard to avoid having major ideological fights of
    the kind we saw in previous years over judicial nominees. I have sought
    to find good people who believe in the Constitution and the law and
    equal justice, who reflected the diversity of America, but who were
    completely qualified, so that I could bring them to the Senate and get
    them through in an expeditious way.
        So, again, I say, I'm going to go back after the August recess and
    try to do this. I'm also going to ask the Senate to do the right thing
    and confirm Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Bill Lann
    Lee, who also deserves to be confirmed.
        I want to thank you for using the power of your voice to encourage
    the Senate to address the mounting crisis in our courts by moving
    forward on the nominees as soon as possible. I want to thank the ABA's
    standing committee on Federal judiciary, especially the chairs, for the
    excellent job you've done evaluating my nominees for 6\1/2\ years.
        I want to ask you, again, to reaffirm your conviction on this issue
    and think about it in the larger context of both our eternal quest for
    individual justice and our eternal quest to build one America and in
    terms of our obligations around the world. If we want to go from
    Northern Ireland to the Middle East to Kosovo and Bosnia to Central
    Africa and ask people to lay down their hatreds, to no longer fear the
    other, to see diversity as a source of interest and joy that makes life
    more exciting but in no way undermines our common humanity, if we want
    to be a force for good around the world, we must do good at home and
    always become better.
        The ABA has been a force for that, and for that I am profoundly
    grateful.
        Thank you very much.

    [[Page 1420]]

    Note: The President spoke at 5:10 p.m. in the Sydney J. Marcus
    Auditorium at the Georgia World Congress Center. In his remarks, he
    referred to Philip S. Anderson, outgoing president, and William G. Paul,
    president-elect, American Bar Association; Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor and
    Secretary of State Cathy Cox of Georgia; former United Nations
    Ambassador Andrew Young; and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame Hank
    Aaron.