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“TRIBUTE TO WILLIAM BENJAMIN GOULD IV” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E132 on Feb. 7, 2001.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO WILLIAM BENJAMIN GOULD IV
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HON. ZOE LOFGREN
of california
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, February 7, 2001
Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Speaker, I wish today to recognize the accomplishments of William Benjamin Gould IV, the Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. Professor Gould was Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board from 1994-1998. While awarding William Gould his fifth honorary doctorate, the Rutgers University President remarked: ``perhaps more than any other living American . . .
[he has] contributed to the analysis, the practice, and the transformation of labor law and labor relations.''
William Gould has been a member of the National Academy of Arbitration since 1970, and has arbitrated and mediated more than 200 labor disputes, including the 1989 wage dispute between the Detroit Federation of Teachers and the Board of Education of that city, as well as the 1992 and 1993 salary disputes between the Major League Baseball Players Association and the Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee. William Gould was named in Ebony Magazine's ``100+ Most Influential Black Americans'' List for 1996, 1997 and 1998. He is a member of the Stanford University John S. Knight Journalism Fellows Program Committee, and the Rand Institute Board of Overseers.
I commend to my colleagues the following article by Professor Gould, which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on January 17, 2001.
``Borking''--Then and Now
(By William B. Gould IV)
When Bill Clinton was inaugurated as president in January 1993, most Republicans in Congress commenced a sustained drive against the legitimacy of his election, notwithstanding the undisputed nature of his victory.
Except for the gays-in-the-military controversy, the most immediate conflicts related to confirmation of his nominees at the Cabinet and subcabinet levels.
``Nannygate'' doomed Zoe Baird, his first choice for attorney general, but soon ideas and political philosophy were to affect the debate about Lani Guinier (whose Justice Department nomination as assistant attorney general in charge of the civil rights division was withdrawn), and Jocelyn Elders (who was confirmed as surgeon general).
Both were African American. I was the third of Clinton's black subcabinet early selections (for chairman of the National Labor Relations Board), and, although confirmed, I attracted the largest number of senatorial ``no'' votes of any administration appointee during that time.
Bill Lann Lee, a Chinese American lawyer from California, was put forward for assistant attorney general, but his nomination was stymied. He was forced to serve on an acting basis, without Senate confirmation.
Opposition to Clinton nominees was said by some to be Republican vengeance for the Senate's 1987 rejection of Robert Bork for the U.S. Supreme Court. The press created a verb, ``Borked.'' The term is now attached to the pending nominations of John Ashcroft for attorney general, Gale Norton for secretary of the interior, and the now-withdrawn candidacy of Linda Chavez for secretary of labor.
The Borking of Clinton nominees differs from the Borking of the Bush triumvirate.
Formal debate about my nomination, for instance, focused on my proposals to strengthen existing labor law. This contrasts with Chavez, who opposes minimum wage, family leave and affirmative action legislation. The contention was that when I would adjudicate labor-management disputes, I would use my reform proposals aimed at fortifying the law.
Bork was attacked primarily because he had opposed most civil rights legislation affecting public accommodations and employment. The Senate rejected him because he was outside the mainstream in the race arena and also opposed the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision.
Ashcroft and Norton, like Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., extol the virtues of the Confederacy and lament its defeat, which spelled slavery's extinction. As Missouri's attorney general, Ashcroft fought desegregation orders in that state. He was a vigorous opponent of affirmative action. As senator, he single handedly scuttled the nomination of a black Missouri judge to the federal bench--an act which President Clinton properly denounced as
``disgraceful,'' illustrating the unequal treatment of minority and women nominees.
As senator, Ashcroft decried the cherished American principle of separation of church and state, railed against common-sense gun control legislation and, like Bork, denounced Roe vs. Wade. Thus, like Bork, the question is whether he can faithfully enforce and promote laws to which is so deeply opposed.
All of this is in sharp contrast to the three of us Clinton nominees whose sin was fidelity to existing law. In 1993, today's supporters of Ashcroft derailed the nomination of those of us who supported the law. Now they support those who would radically transform it.
Some deference to a new president's nomination is appropriate. This was not followed in the Clinton era. As a result, the president was obliged to nominate middle-of-the-road and sometimes downright innocuous judicial candidates and to accept Republican selections for his own administrative agencies.
No one's interests are served if the Democrats now wreak havoc for Bush in response to the Borking visited upon Clinton. But elected representatives have the right and duty to both scrutinize and reject nominees who are out of the mainstream and who would disturb precedent in the absence of a mandate. A half-million Gore plurality in the voting and the murkiness of the Florida ballot hardly supply a mandate for George W. Bush.
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