More than 30 law school faculty members from four area universities signed a letter opposing President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Alabama Rep. Jeff Sessions as attorney general. Thirty-one professorsfrom the law schools of Drexel University, Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania and Villanova University joined more than 1,200 faculty members from around the country in urging the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to reject Trump’s nomination. The signers include 11 professors from Drexel’s Kline School of Law; 12 from Temple’s Beasley School of Law; one from Villanova; and seven from Penn.
The letter, which appears below, also states, “As law faculty who work every day to better understand the law and teach it to our students, we are convinced that Jeff Sessions will not fairly enforce our nation’s laws and promote justice and equality in the United States.” In front of a 1986 Senate Judiciary Committee, J. Gerald Hebert testified on some “deeply concerning” remarks Sessions had made.
Hebert, who was working on voting rights cases for the Department of Justice, split his time between Washington, D.C., and Alabama, where Sessions was a U.S. attorney. He recalled in that Senate meeting that Sessions thought things were OK for minorities in the 1980s, and that civil rights organizations were asking for too much, the Huffington Post reported last year. Sessions served as Alabama attorney general for two years after leaving his positionas U.S. attorney, and was elected as a U.S. senator in 1997, a post he has held since.
OnBrietbart News’ radio showin December 2015, Sessions also said to Stephen Bannon — then chairman of the news organization and now Trump’s top adviser — that he would consider supporting Trump’s campaign proposal to ban Muslim immigration. Ten days after being elected president, Trump announced Sessions’ likely nomination as attorney general. Less than a month later, a GoFundMe campaign — also organized by law professors around the nation — was launched to raise funds for newspaper ads to run in the hometown newspapers of senators who are undecided about Sessions’ nomination. The campaign has raised more than $14,500 of its $16,000 goal.
The letter reads:
