FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON - Lisa Graves, Chief Nominations Counsel to Senator Patrick Leahy-- the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee-- is joining the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union to help lead the organization's bipartisan work on the Patriot Act and broader government actions since 9/11 that threaten civil liberties.
During the Clinton Administration, Graves was one of the youngest people ever appointed to the career position of Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department. As a deputy and an attorney in the Office of Policy Development, Graves gave advice on a wide range of criminal and civil justice issues that shaped national policy. Before joining the Senate, Graves served as a senior executive in the Administrative Office of the Courts.
Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, said that while Graves is perhaps best known on Capitol Hill for her work on the Bush Administration's nominations to the federal bench, it was her lifelong commitment to preserving constitutional values that lead to her new position with the ACLU. (The ACLU takes no position on presidential nominations with the exception of Supreme Court nominees, and then only if the ACLU National Board specifically votes to oppose.)
"Lisa is a skilled strategist and brilliant analyst," Murphy said. "She will provide added momentum to my already strong team as we enter the next phase of our battle against ill-conceived government policies that have unnecessarily sacrificed our freedoms."
Graves joins a team of 40 that includes legislative counsels, organizers, media professionals and administrative staff in the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. The team has scored numerous victories in the last four years, including defeating a remarkable array of legislation, which, if passed, would have had profound civil liberties implications. In the last several years, for example, the ACLU and its coalition partners have stopped major expansions of the Patriot Act; constitutional amendments on same-sex marriage, victims rights and flag desecration; a series of mean-spirited anti-immigrant measures; and legislation to further the president's "faith-based initiative," which seeks to establish government-funded religion.
She also joins an office that has greatly expanded its worth with conservatives in Congress and across the country. In 2003, for example, former Rep. Bob Barr, a conservative from Georgia, joined the ACLU team as a consultant on information privacy and national security issues. Working in coalition with the American Conservative Union and Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, the ACLU has helped Republican and Democratic members of Congress craft the Safety and Freedom Ensured Act, which would bring the Patriot Act back in line with the Constitution.
Graves, who will start in the Washington office next month, comes to the civil liberties struggle at a crucial moment, when sections of the Patriot Act are scheduled to expire by the end of the year if Congress does not vote to renew them.
"Joining the ACLU Washington Legislative Office at this time gives me yet another extraordinary opportunity to continue my lifelong commitment to preserving constitutional values," Graves said. "The ACLU has been a leading force in the fight against overreaching government actions. I cannot think of a more important place to work as we reexamine policies that systematically threaten our cherished freedoms.
"It was a tremendous challenge to work on nominations to the federal courts during a period of partisan disagreement," Graves added. "I now look forward to focusing all of my energy on finding common ground on the broader constitutional and policy questions surrounding the government's post-9/11 policies."
Graves joined the Justice Department's Civil Division as a litigator in 1995 through the Attorney General's Honor Program, after clerking for the Honorable James T. Turner, a Reagan appointee. She received her J.D. cum laude from Cornell Law School in 1994, where she was managing editor of the Cornell Law Review. She was in the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Clinic, and her note, which discusses the right of habeas corpus and other rights, was published in the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. She graduated with highest honors from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 1991, where she studied political science, and she was named the Distinguished Student Scholar in Peace Studies by the Wisconsin Institute.
