Post-Gonzales: Nostalgia for Edward Levi

by Andrew Zajac

It's perhaps a measure both of how rare notions of selfless service have become in Washington and how tall Edward Levi still stands more than 30 years after he served that his name is upon the lips of pundits describing the kind of person needed to patch up the battered, drifting institution that is today's Justice Department.

Levi, a former Univesity of Chicago president, took over a Justice Department wracked by politicization and revelations of domestic spying (sound familiar?) in the wake of Watergate and the Vietnam War.

Levi was credited with quickly restoring departmental morale and in the so-called 'Levi Guidelines', reined in the FBI's domestic surveillance operations and put limits on the bureau's use of informants.

Levi was so esteemed that in November 2005, the department established an award to memorialize his rectitude.

Some would see it as no small irony that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose soon-to-end tenure has set columnists and bloggers to pining for a new Levi, emceed the event creating the in-house honor.

Here's DOJ's announcement of the award. Below that is the department's thumbnail bio of Levi.

NEW AWARD CREATED TO HONOR
FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL EDWARD H. LEVI
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Justice Department commemorates the 30th anniversary of the appointment and administration of Attorney General Edward H. Levi in a ceremony today, and announces the creation of the Edward H. Levi Award for Outstanding Professionalism and Exemplary Integrity.

Attorney General Levi was appointed in 1975 soon after President Gerald Ford assumed office, and through his leadership and high standards in the immediate post-Watergate era, he restored the nation’s confidence in the tradition of legal excellence and uncompromising integrity of the Department.

The Edward H. Levi Award for Outstanding Professionalism and Exemplary Integrity is established to pay tribute to the memory and achievements of Mr. Levi, whose career as an attorney, law professor and dean, and public servant exemplified these qualities in the best traditions of the Department.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales will be joined by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld; U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia; Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum; former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenback; former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Trade Representative Carla A. Hills; and former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge and Solicitor General Robert H. Bork, to honor Mr. Levi.

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Edward Hirsch Levi
Seventy-First Attorney General, 1975-1977

Edward H. Levi was born in Chicago, Illinois, on June 26, 1911. He received his Ph.B. degree from the University of Chicago in 1932 and his JD degree there in 1935. He received his J.S.D. Degree in 1938 from Yale University, where he had been a Sterling fellow in 1935 and 1936. Levi was named assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago in 1936, the year he was admitted to the Illinois bar. From 1940 to 1945 he took a leave of absence from the university to be a special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States. He served in the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, was head of the Consent Decree Section and then first assistant in 1943 and 1945. Levi was first assistant in the Department's War Division for eight months in 1943. In 1944 he was Chairman of the Interdepartmental Committee on Monopolies and Cartels. He returned to the University of Chicago Law School in 1945 as a professor, was named dean of the law school in 1950, provost of the university in 1962, and appointed its president on November 14, 1968. During those years Levi also served the Federal Government as chief counsel to the Subcommittee on Monopoly Power of the House Judiciary Committee in 1950, and as a member of the White House Central Group on Domestic Affairs in 1964 and the White House Task Force on Education in 1966 and 1967. In addition, he was a member of the Presidents' Task Force on Priorities in Higher Education in 1969 and 1970. He also was a member of the National Commission on Productivity and the National Council on the Humanities. On February 7, 1975, President Ford appointed him Attorney General of the United States. Levi died on March 7, 2000.