Eric Holder’s Mixed Record

Eric Holder’s Mixed Record

The attorney general was a champion of civil rights—but not civil liberties.

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

As the nation’s first black attorney general, Eric Holder built a legacy as a tough defender of civil rights and racial justice. Recognizing that the crisis of mass incarceration is the most urgent civil rights issue of our time—that “the path we are currently on is far from sustainable,” as he put it in 2013—Holder rolled back some of the criminal justice system’s worst features, including mandatory-minimum drug sentences and disparate penalties for crack and powder cocaine, while investigating police misconduct and pushing alternatives to incarceration. The same week that he revealed his impending departure, Holder had another announcement: for the first time since 1980, the US prison population is on the decline, falling by nearly 5,000 this past year and set to drop by another 12,000 in the next two years. Those numbers are not nearly high enough, given that 2.2 million Americans still languish in prisons and jails, 38 percent of whom are black. But they are an important start, representing human lives regained. So when Holder spoke in August about the “deep mistrust” of police endemic in places like Ferguson, Missouri, his words carried the weight of his record.

He also returned the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, mangled by eight years of George W. Bush, to fighting form. Enforcing the Voting Rights Act was a top priority. In 2012, the division invoked the VRA to block voter-ID laws in Texas and South Carolina as well as Florida’s cutbacks to early voting. And when the Supreme Court gutted the VRA last year, Holder vowed an aggressive response: “We will not hesitate to take swift enforcement action…against any jurisdiction that seeks to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s ruling by hindering eligible citizens’ full and free exercise of the franchise.” And he made good on his pledge. Since the Court’s decision, the Justice Department has filed lawsuits against restrictive voting laws in Texas and North Carolina and joined other suits challenging new voting restrictions in Ohio and Wisconsin.

Holder also made civil rights history in 2011 by calling the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, setting the stage for the Supreme Court’s ruling against it two years later.

In other areas, alas, Holder has hardly been a champion of liberal values. His department ratcheted up prosecutions of leakers and whistleblowers at a time when their courage was bringing Americans vital information about government surveillance and other violations of civil liberties. More whistleblowers have been prosecuted under President Obama than under all previous presidents combined.

If only Holder had applied the same prosecutorial zeal to the Wall Street firms and executives who brought the economy to its knees in 2008. He has tried to explain the lack of criminal prosecutions by claiming that the cases were too hard to prove—but experts argue that many executives are vulnerable under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which makes it a crime to sign inaccurate financial statements. Instead, Holder has pursued monetary settlements from major firms and expanded the use of “deferred prosecution agreements.” Critics call this a “too big to jail” policy.

Obama should nominate a successor determined to build on Holder’s record as a champion of voting rights and racial justice. But the country needs an about-face on civil liberties. If the president heeded the principles that guided him as a constitutional law professor, his next attorney general would end the campaign against whistleblowers and focus on the real crooks—the banksters of Wall Street.

Hold the powerful to account by supporting The Nation

The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows each week.

Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world economy and set up yet another constitutional crisis at home. Plainclothes officers continue to abduct university students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown abroad to a mega prison against the orders of the courts. And Signalgate promises to be the first of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence at the core of the American empire.

At a time when elite universities, powerful law firms, and influential media outlets are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is more determined than ever before to hold the powerful to account.

In just the last month, we’ve published reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to other countries, exposed the administration’s appeal to obscure laws to carry out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of brave student activists targeted by universities.

We also continue to tell the stories of those who fight back against Trump and Musk, whether on the streets in growing protest movements, in town halls across the country, or in critical state elections—like Wisconsin’s recent state Supreme Court race—that provide a model for resisting Trumpism and prove that Musk can’t buy our democracy.

This is the journalism that matters in 2025. But we can’t do this without you. As a reader-supported publication, we rely on the support of generous donors. Please, help make our essential independent journalism possible with a donation today.

In solidarity,

The Editors

The Nation

Ad Policy
x