Remarks to the
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Thank
you all very much, and thank you, Ken. And a special thank you, as well, to
your national cochairmen, Steve Calabresi, David
McIntosh, and Lee Liberman.
Before
I begin my remarks, let me say that, as some of you may know, today is Ken Cribb's last day in our administration. Liberals all around
town are breaking out the champagne. [Laughter] But I can't think of any better
place than the Federalist Society to say, ``Ken, thank you, Godspeed, and God
bless you.''
How far we've come these last 8 years, not only
in transforming the operations of government, not only in transforming the
Departments and agencies and even the Federal judiciary, but also in changing
the terms of national debate. And nowhere is that change more evident than in
the rise of the Federalist Society on the campuses of
The
Federalist Society is changing the culture of our nation's law schools. You are
returning the values and concepts of law as our founders understood them to
scholarly dialog and, through that dialog, to our legal institutions. Yes, you
are insisting that the Constitution is not some elaborate ink-blot test in
which liberals can find prescribed policies that the people have rejected.
You're fighting for renewed respect for the integrity of our Constitution, for
its fundamental principles, and for its wisdom. And in this, of course, you've
had multitudes of friends and supporters in our administration, and that
includes a certain tenant of a nearby unit of public housing. [Laughter]
Yes,
how far we've come since our administration arrived in
We
pointed, in particular, to a bizarre twisting of values that had crept into our
criminal law, to the confusing of criminals and victims, to an attitude that
the law was not a vehicle for uncovering truth and administering justice but a
game in which clever lawyers tried to trip up the police on the rules.
We
said that we intended to nominate judges and justices who didn't share the
skepticism of our extreme liberal friends about the fundamental values that
underpin our laws and our society. We would select judges who would reaffirm
the core beliefs of our free land. And we have. You know the names on the court
criers list, including Rehnquist and O'Connor and Scalia,
Kennedy, and of course, Judge Robert Bork.
Well,
already we can see the new realism that these and so many others have brought
to our courts. I'm happy to report that as more and more of our appointees have
served, Federal courts have become tougher and tougher on criminals. The average
Federal prison sentence grew by almost a third from 1980 to 1986. And what's
more, as our judges by argument and example reversed longstanding attitudes
about crime and criminals that prevailed in both Federal and State courts, we
also started to see crime rates drop. Between 1980 and 1987, the overall crime
rate fell by nearly 7 percent, while nearly 2 million fewer households were hit
by crime in 1987 than in 1980.
Yet
these statistics, heartening as they are, reflect only the surface of the changes
of the last 8 years, changes that have extended out beyond the judiciary into
every aspect of law enforcement on the Federal and even State level. Eight
years ago, even the idea of a war on drugs was greeted with amused smiles in
this smug capital. The last liberal administration had started to lose interest
in narcotics cases all together. Each year they brought fewer cases to trial,
and by their last year in office, convictions were down by half. We changed
that. We hired more than 4,000 new agents and prosecutors, and under the Vice
President's leadership, Federal, State and local law enforcement officials
started working together to stop the smuggling of illegal drugs into our
nation.
Still,
some failed to take our emphasis on crime seriously. Their friends in Congress
held up our reforms of the Federal Criminal Code for years. And more recently,
they cut funding for the Coast Guard -- among the most important agencies in
our battle against the international drug rings -- and gave the money to Amtrak.
[Laughter] You know, I keep wondering about the liberals. [Laughter] Will they
ever learn the difference between special interests and the national interest?
While
others have talked about beating back the drug lords, we've delivered. During
our administration, drug convictions have nearly tripled and have included such
notorious kingpins as Juan Ramon Matta, while cocaine
seizures are up over 1,800 percent. And for the first time we are, thanks to
the legal reforms I mentioned, seizing assets that have been acquired with drug
money. Some time back I visited
The
liberals have scoffed when I've said we're winning the war on drugs. But since
we came to office, thanks to the work of a certain lovely lady, Americans, and
particularly young people, have heard our plea and are just saying no to drugs.
I might inject right here, if I could, that that ``Just say no'' came from
Are
we hurting the drug rings? Well, the drug lords may have answered that question
themselves a few weeks ago with an assassination attempt on the Secretary of
State. There were reports that the attempt was linked directly to the drug
trade, and if true, this desperate move is a clear sign of the toll we're
taking. But we're not satisfied. We're proposing to step up the pressure to
make convicted drug kingpins subject to the death penalty.
And
let me offer here my thanks and congratulations to the House of
Representatives. Yesterday a broad bipartisan coalition passed the Gekas
amendment, providing for the death penalty against those who commit murder in
the course of a drug felony; the McCollum amendment, denying Federal benefits
to those convicted of certain drug crimes; and the Lungren
amendment, allowing a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. These
provisions, if they also pass the Senate, will represent a giant step forward
in the war on drugs and an achievement of things we have long sought.
And
yet, as at other junctures in the war on drugs, once again too many liberals
oppose us. But now they turn around and charge that we're running a phony war
on drugs. Well, I have a hunch that in November the American people will decide
who's bogus and who's for real.
The
Senate could help us in this and our other battles against crime by bestirring
itself and acting on the 28 judicial nominations that we have submitted, but
that have not yet been confirmed. The Senate's inaction has become a matter of
such serious concern that recently the judicial conference declared a state of
judicial emergency in various districts and circuits -- too many courts are too
far under strength. This is not politics as usual. In 1980 only 17 nominations
had not been acted on by the end of the year, and of these, all but 5 had been nominated
on or after the end of July. Some of our nominees have been waiting for a year.
For
example, Pamela Rymer, who has already proven herself to have a thorough understanding of the problems of
crime and the criminal justice system as a district court judge, has been
waiting for Senate approval as an appeals court judge since April, even though
she received the
Another
impressive nominee is Judith Richards -- Hope, I should say -- I stopped on the
middle name -- Judith Richards Hope for the DC Circuit. Mrs. Hope, among the
most prominent of lawyers in this country, has also been waiting for a
confirmation hearing since April. In contrast, in 1980 Ruth Bader Ginsburg was
nominated by my predecessor to the same court on April 14th, 8 years to the day
before Mrs. Hope's nomination, and was confirmed scarcely 2 months later.
Despite Mrs. Hope's favorable rating from the
I
don't need to tell anyone here the principal reason for the delays. The
liberals may talk about crime and drugs, but the thing that they care about is
their agenda and protecting, as best they can, the one branch of government
where their agenda has clearly held sway.
The
liberals are hoping that within a few weeks the American people will, as the
liberals see it, regain their senses and return the Nation to the hands of
those who once gave it double-digit inflation, plummeting real family income,
economic stagnation, international setbacks, and lectures on malaise --
[laughter] -- or, as the liberals put it, return the nation to those who stand
not for ideology but for competence. [Laughter]
Yes,
they're hoping that within a few months they can wipe the slate clean and
nominate judges who reflect their values and vision of the law. For us
conservatives, the task must be to pin down just what that vision and those
values are, which is not necessarily an easy task in a
time when liberalism has become the masked marvel of American political
discourse. [Laughter] And while we're asking questions about the liberal
agenda, we must be forthright about our own: a decent respect not just for the
rights of criminals but for those of the victims of crime, a respect for the
real world in which the police work day to day, and an end to the kind of
fanciful readings of the Constitution that produce such decisions as Roe versus
Wade.
So,
this is my message to you today: to hold the torch high, to stay in the battle.
Too much is left to do. The battle is far from over. And all is yet to win or
lose. But we stand with the founders of our nation in this ongoing struggle to
protect our freedom. Thomas Jefferson reminded us that ``Our
peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution.'' And he
implored, ``Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.'' For as James
Madison wrote, if ``. . . the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and
ratified by the Nation is not the guide to expounding it . . . there can be no
security for a faithful exercise of its powers.'' It was true then. It is true
now. It will be true always.
And
just this morning -- I have to add something in here, a little experience -- I
received word of one of our drug agents. He was sitting in a car. He was
actually providing protection to a home where the people in that home had been
threatened -- their lives threatened because of their work against drugs. He
was shot. And just before coming over here I made a telephone call to the
hospital. The bullet entered through the chin and came out from the forehead,
very close to the eye. And the voice on the phone in the hospital room turned
out to be his father's, because he cannot speak. It will probably be a year of
continued surgery before he is able to come back among us. And he told me that
his son couldn't speak but could hear. So, he said, ``I will hold the phone to
his ear. And when you hear the tapping, that will mean he's on and listening.''
And
so, I was able to tell him of our pride in him and how much we appreciated his
great sacrifice and all and how much he would be in our prayers as the time
went on until he is healed, and then said goodbye. And again he tapped on the
phone with his finger to let me know that he had heard. And his father came on,
and I said goodbye to him. And his father then said he had just been handed a
slip of paper by his son. He said his son was thanking me for the call.
Well,
this morning, earlier, I had read some of the statements by the opposition
Congressmen to this death penalty amendment that was passed yesterday and that
I mentioned earlier. And I heard their sheer horror at the idea that we should
be taking someone's life or just killing someone else in connection with drugs.
And I've been thinking about that ever since this telephone call. I'd like to
engage some of them in personal confrontation. In fact, I'll go out of my way
to do it.
Well,
I want to thank you all not only for your warm welcome but thank you for what
you are doing. And God bless you all.
Note: The President
spoke at