Law profs claim Sessions too 'racially insensitive' for AG
More than 1,300 law professors from across the country have signed a petition calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Sen. Jeff Sessions’ appointment as Attorney General.
The petition cites allegations of “prejudice against African Americans” by Sessions, charges which cost him a federal judgeship in 1986, as grounds for a rejection, though few of the claims made against Sessions appear to have been confirmed.
Nonetheless, the petition argues that “nothing in Senator Sessions’ public life since 1986 has convinced us that he is a different man than the 39-year-old who was deemed too racially insensitive to be a federal district court judge.”
While Sessions’ colleagues at the time did in fact accuse him of using the n-word and joking about the Ku Klux Klan, the Alabama senator continues to deny those accusations, saying he is “not the Jeff Sessions [his] detractors have tried to create.”
[RELATED: Alabama students petition to disinvite Sessions over Trump endorsement]
“I am not a racist. I am not insensitive to blacks,” he declared emphatically, according to The Washington Post. “Racism is totally unacceptable in America. Everybody needs to be treated fairly and objectively.”
Still, though, the petition plainly asserts that the law professors “are convinced that Jeff Sessions will not fairly enforce our nation’s laws and promote justice and equality in the United States.”
The petition then cites an apparent “misguided prosecution of three civil rights activists for voter fraud in Alabama in 1985” as evidence, saying Sessions has consistently promoted “the myth of voter-impersonation fraud.”
It goes on to list Sessions’ “support for building a wall along our country’s southern border” as a cause for concern, while also bashing his “regressive drug policies that have fueled mass incarceration.”
[RELATED: Alabama faculty join effort to silence Sen. Jeff Sessions]
“Some of us have concerns about his questioning of the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change,” it continues. “Some of us have concerns about his repeated opposition to legislative efforts to promote the rights of women and members of the LGBTQ community. Some of us share all of these concerns.”
At the time of publication, 1,330 law professors from 178 law schools in 49 states had signed the petition, including two from Sessions’ alma mater, the University of Alabama School of Law.
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