More than 1,000 law professors oppose Sessions

WASHINGTON — More than 1,100 law professors are urging the Senate to reject the nomination of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to serve as attorney general in President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration.

The group, which represents 170 law schools in 48 states, expressed its opposition Tuesday in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, asserting that the Republican senator would "not fairly enforce our nation's laws and promote justice and equality in the United States.''

Professors, who included Harvard Law School's Laurence Tribe and University of California-Irvine's Erwin Chemerinsky, referenced the Senate's 1986 rejection of Sessions' nomination for a federal judgeship, due in part to Sessions' past, racially charged statements.

"Nothing in Sen. Sessions' public life since 1986 has convinced us that he is a different man than the 39-year-old attorney who was deemed to racially insensitive to be a federal district court judge,'' the professors' petition states.

During the contentious Senate hearing in 1986, Sessions was grilled about a number of remarks, including one in which Sessions referred to the Ku Klux Klan as "okay until I found out they smoked pot.'' Sessions also was criticized then for his role in a failed Alabama voter fraud prosecution. Sessions' opponents have alleged that as U.S. attorney in Mobile, the prosecutor launched the case against black voting rights activists as a way to intimidate minority voters.

"Some of us have concerns about his misguided prosecution of three civil rights activists for voter fraud in Alabama in 1985 and his consistent promotion of the myth of voter-impersonation fraud,'' the professors said.

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The statement comes a week before Sessions is scheduled to appear before the Judiciary Committee for confirmation hearings.

Sessions' spokeswoman Sarah Flores called the criticism "business as usual for the same far-left academics who trot out letters opposing just about any conservative or Republican who’s nominated to a key position by a Republican president.

"Jeff Sessions enjoys wide support from law enforcement organizations to civil rights leaders to victims’ rights organizations and many others,'' Flores said. "He will be confirmed with both Democratic and Republican votes to be the next attorney general.''

Last month, the International Association of Chiefs of  Police, the nation's largest group of top police leaders, the National Association of Police Organizations and a coalition of more than 100 former U.S. attorneys offered their endorsement of Sessions to serve as the nation's chief law enforcement officer.

University of California Berkeley law professor Ty Alper, one of the 1,140 law school faculty members to joint the petition, said Sessions' unstinting support of anti-immigration measures and his questioning of such things as the human contribution to climate change "have struck a nerve.''

"We know that this is an uphill battle,'' Alper said. "But we hope that the volume of voices will give senators some pause.''