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• Monday, March 19, 2007 10:15 AM

  Reno firings

  The Duke Law Journal article bushworse... mentioned above is here. It also contains some history:

  Before Bill Clinton’s election, presidents expected that such resignations would be offered.30 After Clinton’s inauguration, several sitting U.S. Attorneys balked at offering to resign their posts once the Senate confirmed Janet Reno as President Clinton’s Attorney General.31 After becoming Attorney General, Reno had made what she thought was the routine request that sitting U.S. Attorneys submit their resignations to her, so she could consider whether to reappoint them. She did not expect negative backlash because similar requests had been made by her predecessors in the Carter, Reagan, and Bush administrations and honored by previous U.S. Attorneys. Their refusals to tender their resignations embarrassed Reno, and, in fact, the desire to cause Reno embarrassment may have been the impetus for the refusals.32 After sending mixed signals on whether all sitting U.S. Attorneys should proffer their resignations to Attorney General Ashcroft,33 President George W. Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft requested the resignations of all but a few of the nation’s U.S. Attorneys.34 Not a single Republican leader questioned the propriety of Bush’s and Ashcroft’s actions.

  NORM THEORY AND THE FUTURE OF THE FEDERAL APPOINTMENTS PROCESS by MICHAEL J. GERHARDT (Arthur B. Hanson Professor of Law, William & Mary Law School, [Duke Law Journal, https://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dlj/downloads/dlj50p1687.pdf] vol 50, page 1687.

  Via Watching the Watchers http://watchingthewatchers.org/story/2007/3/13/15406/0864

  —EJ Read EJ's other letters
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