Lani Guinier

Lani Guinier Carol ( born April 19, 1950 in New York City ) is an American lawyer, university lecturer and civil rights activist. It deals mainly with the issues of race, gender and democratic and representative decision-making processes (especially the right to vote or to Affirmative Action ).

Background and education

Guinier comes from a family of lawyers: Your grandfather was a barrister, who had learned at Cambridge. Her father Ewart Gunnier (died 1990) was the first chairman of the Department of Afro- American Studies at Harvard University. With Eugenia " Genii ", born Paprin (died 2009), he had next to Lani two more daughters; the Jewish mother placed great emphasis on intercultural understanding in the rearing of their daughters.

After graduating as third best in the Andrew Jackson High School in Queens Lani Guinier studied with a scholarship from the National Merit Corporation and The New York Times on Radcliffe College, where she completed her BA in June 1971 cum laude gained. In June 1974 she made her J. D. at the Law School of Yale University. At Yale Guinier Bill Clinton learned and know its future wife Hillary Rodham.

Career

From August 1974 to August 1976 Guinier worked in Detroit as a Law Clerk for Damon J. Keith, then Chairman Federal Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan (later Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th district ). From September 1976 to September 1977 she was Juvenile Court Referee in the juvenile court of Wayne County ( Michigan). As a Special Assistant, she worked for Assistant Attorney General Drew S. Days in the Civil Rights Division. From October 1977 to February 1981 she was employed by the Ministry of Justice of the United States. From April 1981 to July 1988, she worked as Assistant Council for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund ( LDF). Here she was primarily responsible for the representation of electoral law cases in court. In its capacity as LDF lawyer sued, inter alia, the 1984 Arkansas State at the time when Bill Clinton was the governor, because of Arkansas ' statute for deputy voter registration; the case ended with a settlement.

Guinier 1986 married the lawyer Nolan A. Bowie; the ceremony took place at her father's house in Oak Bluffs (Massachusetts ) and was directed by Damon J. Keith; the Clintons were guests. Guinier has a son with her husband.

From 1985 to 1989 was Guinier unscheduled Professor ( Adjunct Professor ) at the New York University School of Law. From July 1988 to June 1992 she was Associate Professor (Associate Professor ) of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, from July 1992 to June 1998 ibid. full professor of law.

Nomination as Assistant Attorney General

On 29 April 1993 it was announced by United States Attorney General Janet Reno for the Clinton administration several nominations for positions in the Department of Justice, including Guinier as Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division. Guinier nomination gave rise to a controversy begun by conservatives, in particular, their writings on the Voting Rights Act and in connection therewith had their criticism of the American electoral system to the content; Guinier ruled, among other things, with recourse to James Madison, this representing minorities insufficient or suppress these tyrannical; they advocated instead accumulating, more mandate constituencies and qualified majorities. Recurring allegations were that Guinier fact that the principles of Majority Rule and One Person, One Vote fundamentally reject and would support racial quotas. A first attack was carried out by Guinier a comment by Clint Bolick in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ, at that time the most widely read newspaper in America ) on 30 April headlined Clinton 's Quota Queens ( an allusion to welfare queen and quotas ); in the article, which also attacked another nominee with Norma V. Cantú, claimed Bolick, Guinier ideas would amount to a racial apartheid system ( Bolick continued his campaign in the program Morning Edition from NPR continued ); One week later, Paul Gigot warned in the WSJ, Guinier was the reincarnation of John C. Calhoun and suited better for the Department of the Foreign Ministry of Bosnia. Joe Klein described in Newsweek Guinier idea to electoral rights as a race- based gimmicks. John Leo claimed in U.S. News and World Report, Guinier would describe as a white racist political monolith. The New Republic described Guinier as firmly convinced of an irreducible, racial, "we" and "they" in American society; in the same journal claimed Abigail Thernstrom, Guinier would start with a complete distrust of the white America; Lally Weymouth quoted in the Washington Post Thernstrom that Guinier was a far-left candidate and spokesperson for a radical politics and do not believe in the democratic process; Weymouth also had Will Marshall, director of the Progressive Policy Institute and a leading New Democrat, to speak, assistant Guinier, an unprecedented extension of judicial supervision of federal legislatures and thus to demand racial rights, which stand in contrast to Clinton's term. Conservative groups such as the Institute for Justice, as well as liberal as the American Jewish Congress who opposed Guinier nomination. Guinier negative votes from the Senate came from both Republicans and Democrats: Orrin Hatch called Guinier as an architect of racial preferences that would bring America to the path of racial balkanization; Alan K. Simpson characterized the Guinier writings as very disturbing and a reverse racism recommending; Bob Dole called Guinier a consistent supporter of quotas and electoral fraud plans; Democratic Senator Joe Biden expressed concern about Guinier writings. Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy distanced himself from Guinier, as Patrick Leahy, who, however, lamented that Guinier was placed in the press before the court; Democratic Senator Carol Moseley Braun came Guinier not help ( and learned for criticism; Clinton later noted in his autobiography that Kennedy and Moseley Braun both had urged him to withdraw the nomination ); Rejection experienced Guinier beyond by Raoul Lowery Contreras, in the New York Times as well as individuals such as Al From or AM Rosenthal and generally in the centrist to conservative liberals of the New Democrats. One of the strongest opponents Guinier word in the House of Representatives was Dave McCurdy, head of the Democratic Leadership Council. During these operations, the White House publicly supported (especially by press secretary George Stephanopoulos ) Guinier, however prepared before it, withdraw the nomination; Meanwhile itself Guinier met on your own with individual senators ( as Arlen Specter, Dennis DeConcini, Herb Kohl, and Howard Metzenbaum Alan K. Simpson) to them - largely successful - to convince them of their nomination.

The White House was informed on the evening of June 2, about two dozen Democratic senators that only a minority of the members of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary would probably vote for Guinier and the White House therefore had to withdraw the nomination. Clinton sent a request Guinier, himself withdraw the nomination; Guinier refused and defended in the evening instead, for the first time publicly expressed their views on ABC's Nightline. The Congressional Black Caucus ( CBC) demanded on June 3 that Clinton must defend the nomination. On the evening of the same day, Clinton met with Guinier in the Oval Office; after the meeting he informed her by telephone on the withdrawal of nomination. The next day, Clinton stated that he had not read Guinier writings at the time of nomination; he have caught this and had come to the conclusion that they clearly were suitable for an interpretation that is inconsistent with his own views on civil rights. President Clinton himself stated his objections to Guinier writings by naming an article in the Michigan Law Review Guinier, Guinier therefore have a general argument for proportional representation and minority veto; Clinton described this as inappropriate panacea and to defend anti-democratic and heavy. Later, Clinton called Guinier particular alleged assessment of the ( black & Republican ) governor of Virginia Douglas Wilder (as not authentic black) as well as its proposals in relation to Etowah County, Alabama.

Anthony Lewis ruled in retrospect, Guinier who actually explicitly rejected racial quotas and have represented no radical ideas, destination has become one of the most effective smear campaigns since the days of Joe McCarthy. David Corn was, Guinier was like no public figure demonized since Anita Hill was; the attacks were motivated by racism and the need to portray themselves humblest civil rights activism as dangerous. Although conservative politicians and academics had started the attacks, the American media would have made ​​accomplices ( including Corn and Nightline and The New York Times is one ). Randall Kennedy ruled that the Guinier representation by their opponents as anti- integration, racial separatist was completely wrong. Stephen L. Carter found that the media had largely issued false accusations against Guinier as true. Commentators saw in Guinier failed nomination similarities to President Ronald Reagan's failed nomination Robert Bork to the Supreme Court ( addressed in Nightline on it, noticed Guinier that Bork had at least get a hearing ) and Clinton's failed nominations of Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood ( " Nanny Gate ") and Clinton's behavior in the scandal Sister Souljah. Legal scholars such as Richard Briffault, Michael E. Lewyn and Arthur Eisenberg presented the Guinier representation as radical and undemocratic in the media in question and defended their writings. Jane Rhodes denounced the media as accomplices in the creation and dissemination of Guinier as the embodiment of the most hated aspects of affirmative action reaffirming the image of the undeserved and at the expense of white men special favor sustaining arms.

Guinier saw from Clinton and others misunderstood and regretted that she had not defend their views in the consultation process before the Senate can. They also criticized the support provided by the White House as inadequate and cited the example that she got made ​​until 28 days after the nominating an employee of the Justice Department to the side. Criticism of Clinton's withdrawal of nomination Guinier expressed the senators Paul Wellstone and Arlen Specter. Severe criticism of Clinton also came from the black press ( including The Baltimore Afro - American Newspaper, The New York Amsterdam News and The New Journal and Guide ), which had held back during the nomination phase. Clinton himself convened to limit the damage a meeting with disgruntled representatives of civil rights and women's rights groups ( including Kweisi Mfume, head of the CBC; Jewell Jackson McCabe, founder of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women; Joseph Lowery, director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Dorothy I. Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women; Elaine Jones, legal director of the NAACP legal Defense and Educational Fund, Eddie N. Williams, Director of the joint Center for Political Studies ); a few days later Mfume said the participation of the CBC from the meeting. Vice - President Al Gore was interviewed in Nightline on June 3, on the subject.

Other academic career

In the winter semester 1996 Guinier was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. Since July 1998 Guinier is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she holds the Bennett Boskey Professor since September 2001. Guinier also had from September to December 2007, a visiting professor of law at Columbia Law School, was in the spring of 2009 Fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and was from September to December 2011, a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School.