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One of those different expectations is that the Department will be independent and not subject to the whims of politics. To that end, there are institutional norms and processes that have been created and which are intended to give practical effect to this notion of independence. The College was fortunate to have been addressed at the Spring Meeting in San Diego by two peo- ple who have unique insight into the lofty ideals to which the Department of Justice aspires and to the compelling need for the Department to maintain both the appear- ance, as well as the reality, of being inde- pendent: Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Former Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall.
General Lynch grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her father was a Baptist minister, her mother a school librarian. Ear- ly on, she developed an interest in law large- ly from her family. She grew up hearing sto- ries about her grandfather, a sharecropper and himself also a pastor, who helped falsely accused Black people escape the Jim Crow South in the 1930s. She later spent hours watching court proceedings with her father in Durham, North Carolina when the fam- ily moved there.
A two-time graduate of Harvard University, she received a B.A. in American Literature in 1981 and her J.D. in 1984. Upon gradu- ation, General Lynch started her legal career in private practice in New York. In 1990 she joined the United States Attorney’s Of- fice for the Eastern District of New York as a drugs and violent crime prosecutor.
General Lynch quickly rose through the ranks to become the Chief Assistant to the U.S. Attorney in 1998. During that time she was part of the successful prosecution of a major police brutality case, the Abner Louima case. Louima, a Haitian immigrant, was sexually assaulted by uniformed police officers in a Brooklyn police precinct. Gen- eral Lynch considers the Louima case one of her proudest moments.
We were also joined at the Meeting by Jeffrey Wall, a former Acting So- licitor General of the United States during the Trump Administration. As acting Solicitor General, Wall was responsible for representing the Unit- ed States in all matters before the U.S. Supreme Court and for coordi- nating appellate litigation for the United States. The Solicitor General is the fourth highest ranking position within the Justice Department. Wall earned a B.A. from Georgetown University in 1998 and his J.D. from the University of Chicago in 2003. Following law school, Wall clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and later for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.
From 2008 to 2013, Wall served as an Assistant Solicitor General. His first case before the Supreme Court resulted in a unanimous decision written by his former boss, Justice Thomas. Wall has since argued more than thirty cases before the Court as either a private litigant or as an assistant solicitor. Those arguments have involved cases across various subject areas: securities, class actions, intellectual property, and the First Amendment. Wall cur- rently heads up the appellate practice at Sullivan & Cromwell.
When we think about the Justice Department and its independence, we are most often referring to the Department’s prosecution function. Gen- eral Lynch noted that prosecutorial discretion is “a serious undertaking. It should be undertaken with great gravity, with great forethought . . . without influence from either political or other forces or agendas. And it is because the mission is so important that independence is important.” General Lynch noted that people have to have faith in our justice system, which we manage with the consent of people who agree to be subject to
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In 1999, she was nominated by President Clinton to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position she held until 2002 when she returned to private practice. In 2010, President Obama nominated Lynch to return as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. A few years later, in 2014, President Obama nominated her to serve as the 83rd Attorney General of the United States, succeeding Eric Holder. General Lynch became the second African American and the second woman to hold that position.