Word: mccree
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court may be the stuff of lawyers' dreams, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But for a gentle-looking black lawyer named Wade H. McCree Jr. once a month is more like it. Dressed in striped trousers and traditional morning coat, McCree, 58, appears before the black-robed Justices as the lawyer for the U.S. Government. As Solicitor General, he is responsible for arguing and briefing the Government's position before the Supreme Court. He also decides what cases lost by the Government in lower court will be appealed...
Little understood outside legal circles, this role is crucial to shaping the law. By rejecting two-thirds of all the cases the Government could appeal, McCree acts as a gatekeeper for the overburdened courts. In effect, he decides which issues involving the Federal Government-from the meaning of an agency regulation to the meaning of the Constitution-need to be finally resolved and which issues can be left to simmer. Last week, for example, McCree okayed a Government appeal on behalf of the Food and Drug Administration, which is trying to establish that it has the right to investigate makers...
...McCree is supported by a staff of 18 lawyers that has been called by former D.C. Bar Association President John Douglas the "most prestigious blue-ribbon law office in the United States." All staff members were in the top 2% of their law school classes. Most are young and could be earning considerably more. Instead, they accept salaries ranging from $22,000 to $47,000 to "play in the big leagues," as McCree puts it. Says the Solicitor General: "We have the excitement of being in the eye of the hurricane...
...political whirlwind like the Bakke case, brought by Allan Bakke, applicant to a California medical school who successfully argued he had been excluded in favor of less qualified blacks. In an early draft of a brief stating the Government's position on that "reverse discrimination" case, McCree came down in favor of affirmative action, but explicitly against quotas. After loud protests from black leaders and some Cabinet officers, including HEW Secretary Joseph Califano, McCree and Assistant U.S. Attorney General Drew Days, who is also black, changed the emphasis considerably. Avoiding the question of quotas, the final draft strongly argued...
...McCree, Bakke posed a particularly hard dilemma. Sympathetic to the civil rights movement-as a federal judge, he ruled frequently in favor of busing to desegregate schools-he is also known for lawyerly caution and balance. Comments one legal scholar: "He thinks like a lawyer, not a civil rights activist." Bakke's fallout will create further dilemmas. The Supreme Court has agreed to review a federal district court order forcing...