Griffin Boyette Bell (October 31, 1918 - January 5, 2009) is an American lawyer and former US Attorney General. He served as the 72nd Attorney General during Jimmy Carter's reign. He is a lawyer at King & amp; Spalding.
Video Griffin Bell
Initial years and legal practice
Bell was born on October 31, 1918 in Americus, Georgia, the son of Thelma Leola Bell (Pilcher) and Adlai Cleveland Bell, a cotton farmer. He attended several public schools before enrolling at Georgia Southwestern College and then Walter F. George's Law School at Mercer University. During World War II, Bell served in the United States Army Quartermaster Corps from 1942 to 1946. Bell served as a Warner Robins town lawyer, Georgia while still at school. He practiced law at King & amp; Spalding in Georgia from 1948 to 1961. He returned to the firm before and after his services as United States Attorney General. Bell handles many high profile cases after leaving the office, such as an internal investigation of cash management practices from E. F. Hutton & Together..
Maps Griffin Bell
Marriage and children
She married former Mary Foy Powell in 1943 until her death in 2000. Her only son, Griffin B. Bell, Jr., was a lawyer in Georgia and married Glenda Maxwell Bell. Mary and Griffin Bell have grandchildren, Griffin B. Bell, III, also a lawyer in Georgia, and granddaughter, Katherine Bell McClure.
Political career
President John F. Kennedy appointed Bell, who had been chairman of Kennedy's presidential campaign in Georgia, to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 1961. He served for more than fourteen years at the Fifth Circuit. He often plays an instrumental role in mediating disputes between court factions during the height of the American Civil Rights Movement.
In the aftermath of the disputed 1966 Georgian gubernatorial election between Democrat Lester Maddox and Republic of Howard "Bo" Callaway, Bell joined Republican Judge Elbert Tuttle in imposing Georgia's constitutional provisions requiring the legislature to elect a governor if no election candidate receives a majority vote. sound. The judges concluded that a disproportionate legislature might "dilute" the candidate's vote with plurality, in this case Callaway. Bell compared the legislative elections with the former District Systems Unit, a type of electoral college previously used in Georgia to elect the governor but was denied by the US Supreme Court. Bell and Tuttle granted a temporary suspension of their decision to allow an appeal to the US Supreme Court and determined that the state could resolve the deadlock as long as the legislature did not vote. In the five-to-two decision known as Fortson v. Morris , the high court rammed Bell-Tuttle's legal grounds and directed the legislature to choose between Maddox and Callaway. Two liberal judges, William O. Douglas and Abe Fortas have opposed the governor's legislative elections, but the majority of the court, led this time by Hugo Black, took a strict constructionist line and cleared the way for Maddox's final election.
Bell resigned from the Fifth Circuit in March 1976 to continue his legal practice at King & amp; Spalding. In December 1976, US President Jimmy Carter nominated him to become the 72nd US Attorney General. He served until August 1979. His Watergate era nomination was initially controversial because he was a South and a personal friend of the President. However, by the time he left the office, Bell had eliminated his worries and won praise from most of his criticisms in the United States Senate and the media. He is credited with bringing the necessary independence and professionalism to the Department of Justice. Unprecedented and unuplicated ever since, Bell posted publicly every third party's contacts, including meetings and calls with the White House, members of Congress, or other non-Justice Department individuals, to rebuild confidence in the Department of Justice.
On April 10, 1978, Attorney General Bell announced the charges of former FBI Director L. Patrick Gray, Mark Felt and former FBI Assistant Director Edward Miller to allow the break-ins of radical political activists in New York City. Bell introduced the requirement that any illegal official activity be made in writing. Five Attorneys of the Department of Justice resign over allegations of reluctance from Prosecutor Bell to pursue others in the department for illegal activities associated with domestic spies.
Bell led efforts to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978. The Carter administration, suggested by Bell, greatly increased the number of women and minorities serving on the federal bench. Bell recruited Wade McCree, an African American then served as a judge in the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, to serve as United States Public Attorney, and Drew S. Days, III, an African American lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund he had admired the oral argument at before him, to lead the Civil Rights Division. Bell managed to lead the negotiations to divide his former court of appeal, the Fifth Circuit (from Georgia to Texas) into two courts: the New Fifth Circuit based in New Orleans and the Eleventh Circuit based in Atlanta. Bell also led efforts to professionalize the Federal Bureau of Investigation after Watergate and recruited other federal appeals judges to recommend to the President as Director, Judge William Webster of the Eighth Circuit. After Bell resigned as Attorney General in August 1979, President Carter later appointed him as Special Ambassador to the Helsinki Convention.
From 1985 to 1987, Bell served as a member of the US Secretary's Advisory Committee in South Africa. In 1989, he was appointed Deputy Chairman of President George H. W. Bush's Commission on Federal Ethics Law Reform. During the Iran-Contra affairs investigation, he was an advisor to President George H.W. Bush. As a lawyer during this period, he specializes in internal company investigations, many of which are high-profile, as such for E.F. Hutton followed the federal indictment of his cash management practices.
In September 2004 he was appointed Chief Judge of the United States Military Tribunal. Bell was replaced by Judge Frank J. Williams in July 2007, when the first two cases were brought to court, due to poor health.
Society
Bell, whose intelligence has been widely reported, is a very popular and popular member of the Carter Cabinet on the social scene. Bell introduced the rooster sausage as one of the more publicized foods in Washington. The plate, made of paprika spurs chicken from Georgia, is widely rumored to be an aphrodisiac. It is maintained that he slipped a potent supply of sausage to the White House to President Carter through their close friend, Charles Kirbo.
The Alfalfa Club is a century-old American social, political, and business organization. At his annual dinner dinner in 1979, Bell was Alfalfa's candidate for President of the United States and quipped when he began his acceptance speech that he hoped that President Carter would now understand the full meaning of his warning that he would not serve as Attorney General during the presidential reelection campaign. Bell (and also Jimmy Carter) is a member of the Gridiron Secret Society.
Bell was the first cabinet officer named on Mr. Richard Blackwell about the best Americans in 1978, citing the former Attorney General's love for the wide, lean, and thick ties that became symbols from the mid to late 1970s.
Death
Griffin Bell died on January 5, 2009. According to Bell Associated Press, Bell is being treated for complications from pancreatic cancer and has suffered from long-term kidney disease. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue ordered the US flag to fly with half the staff in the state of Georgia on January 7, 2009, the day of Bell's funeral. He is buried at Oak Grove Cemetery Americus, Section N3-South, where his tombstone contains inscriptions "Citizen Soldiers, Trial Lawyers, Federal Appeals Judge, US Attorney General."
Awards and awards
In December 2008, Bell received his Doctoral Degree in Humanities from Georgia Southwestern State University in recognition of his achievements and awards for his efforts to promote the interests of his alma mater.
See also
- List of US political promises crossing party lines
References
- Bell, Griffin B. and Ronald J. Ostrow. Caring for the Law Morrow. 1982. ISBNÃ, 978-0-688-01136-9
- Murphy, Reg, "Unusual Reason, Achievement of Griffin Bell," Peachtree Press.
External links
- Griffin Boyette Bell at the Biographic Directory of Federal Judges , a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
- Mercer Bell Surface Address
- Georgian Encyclopedia article.
- Appearance in C-SPAN
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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