ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society

The U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general office and the U.S. Office of Professional Responsibility issued a report today revealing that top officials in the Department of Justice used political and ideological considerations in staffing its honors and summer intern programs. The report says that the DOJ passed over “many qualified candidates” for the department’s honors and summer intern programs because of their affiliations with perceived liberal groups, while attorneys and law students affiliated with conservative groups, like the Federalist Society, were given more favorable treatment.

The New York Times reports that the inspector general’s report found that the Justice Department’s practice “constituted misconduct and also violated the department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations.”

The report includes analysis of data showing that applicants for both the DOJ’s honors program and summer intern program who had “liberal affiliations were” turned down at a “much higher rate." For example, the report's data on the honors program "indicates that candidates with liberal affiliations were deselected at a much higher rate (15 out of 18)  than candidates with conservative affiliations (0 out of 5) or candidates with neutral affiliations (11 out of 48) ...."  

The inspector general and professional responsibility offices studied “membership in the American Constitution Society and Federalist Society to determine if there were any differences in the selections rates for candidates who reported an affiliation with either of these groups.”

The report revealed that all seven applicants who were ACS members were turned away for interviews, while only 2 of the 29 applicants with Federalist Society connections were rejected. 

 Applicants for the DOJ’s Summer Law Intern Program (SLIP) were also affected by affiliations with the American Constitution Society or the Federalist Society. ACS Executive Director Lisa Brown criticized the DOJ's practice, saying it was "a grave mistake to turn over to political appointees non-political hiring decisions that historically have been left to career employees."

The report showed that 12 of 13 applicants who described themselves as members of ACS were not selected for the intern program. None of the applicants connected to the Federalist Society were denied interviews for the intern program.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., (D-Mich.), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said the report confirms that politics was being improperly wielded in the department. “When it comes to the hiring of nonpartisan career attorneys,” Conyers said, “our system of justice should not be corrupted by partisan politics. It appears the politicization at Justice was so pervasive that even interns had to pass a partisan litmus test.” The inspector general’s report is the beginning of a series of investigations growing from the 2007 scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys, the Times reports.