Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
7337988
label
Exchange of Remarks between the President and Edward H. Levi at the Swearing-in Ceremony of Edward H. Levi As Attorney General [Ford Speech or Statement]
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
7337988
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
Exchange of Remarks between the President and Edward H. Levi at the Swearing-in Ceremony of Edward H. Levi As Attorney General [Ford Speech or Statement]
citationUrl
collections
White House Press Releases (Ford Administration)
Press Releases
largeImageUrl
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
7337988
levelOfDescription
item
productionDates
day
7
logicalDate
1975-02-07
month
2
year
1975
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
01d097446fbde955
ocrText
Digitized from Box 7 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FEBRUARY 7, 1975
OFFICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
THE WHITE HOUSE
EXCHANGE OF REMARKS
BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT
AND
EDWARD H. LEVI
AT THE SWEARING-IN CEREMONY
OF EDWARD H. LEVI
AS ATTORNEY GENERAL
THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
11:05 A.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Vice President, Mr. Justice Powell,
Acting Attorney General Silberman -- your tenure is
rather short, Larry -- Attorney General-designate
Edward Levi, Mrs. Levi, employees of the Department
of Justice:
It is really a great occasion for me to come
to the Department of Justice and participate in this
wonderful ceremony in the Great Hall of the Department
of Justice and before making a comment or two about
our new Attorney General, let me say that I am deeply
grateful to the people of the Department of Justice
who, in a period of great difficulty, turbulence and
problems of unusual significance -- all of you --- have
done a fine job, and on behalf of 213 million other
Americans, let me express my gratitude for them as
well as for myself.
I do want to say also a word of appreciation
to Bill Saxbe, who became the Attorney General at a
very difficult time. I knew Bill Saxbe as a Member of
the Congress. I knew him when he was Attorney
General for the State of Ohio, and I wish to compliment
Bill on the job that he did, again, during a period of
great difficulty.
Obviously, he has new and difficult chores,
but they are equally important, representing our country
in another land almost halfway around the world, a
country of some 600 million people, a vitally important
country, not only in that part of the world, but else-
where.
MORE
Page 2
Bill, I am sure that I can speak for all of
you in this Great Hall and all that worked with you
in wishing you the very, very best on this new mission.
I was reviewing with the new Attorney General
some of his past activities, and all of a sudden it
occurred to me that although he had gone to the
University of Chicago as an under graduate and gotten
his legal degree from the University of Chicago Law
School, he and I appeared in New Haven in the fall of 1935.
He came with a much more distinguished record,
as a graduate of the University of Chicago and its
law school, and I came to Yale as a graduate of the
University of Michigan with a job as an assistant
football coach.
I struggled for a couple of years to try and
convince the Yale Law School that they would admit me,
and struggled with the Department of Athletics to
convince me that I could do both. All of the time,
Ed, of course, was adding to his illustrious career as
a legal scholar.
He went on to great achievements in the
legal profession, the Department of Justice, as subse-
quently the Dean of the University of Chicago Law
School, and finally as the President of a great educational
institution, the University of Chicago.
I struggled and finally got through law
school, and it is, I think, a wonderful experience for
me to have the privilege, on this fine morning, to
participate in a ceremony where the new Attorney General
will be sworn into a very important job in this
country, a responsibility of carrying out with conviction
and dedication, integrity, the laws of the United
States, protecting the rights of individuals, protecting
the rights of the government, and making the Department
the great Department that ithas been and must be if all
of our citizens are to have faith in the laws of our
land.
So, it is a privilege for me to join with you
in participation in the ceremony of a man who has
earned the honor of being the Attorney General of the
United States; participating in a ceremony for a person
who will make certain that all of our fellow citizens
believe this government, when laws are interpreted, when
laws are carried out, and this faith is vitally
important for our country at this very troubled time.
MORE
Page 3
So, Ed, I congratulate you. I could not
help but notice that you were immensely successful
in your confirmation proceedings. You did much
better than I. I spent about five days before a
Senate committee and did not get unanimous support. You
spent about a day before a Senate committee and were
whisked through the Senate Chamber without a recorded
vote.
I compliment you, but it is a compliment to
you that the Senate of the United States has such faith
in you, as your associates in the Department of Justice
will, as I do, as President of the United States.
So, it is a privilege for me to ask the
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court,
Justice Powell, to administer the oath.
Justice Powell, of course, in his own right,
is a man of great legal stature, former President of the
American Bar Association, and a man with a renowned
reputation in the private practice.
Now I ask Justice Powell if he will administer
the oath of office to our new Attorney General, Edward
Levi.
(The Associate Justice administered the oath
of office.)
MORE
Page 4
ATTORNEY GENERAL LEVI: President Ford, Vice President
Rockefeller, Justice Powell, Members of the Cabinet, distinguished
Members of Congress, Deputy Attorney General Silberman: it was
with a sense of responsibility I assumed this post. The mission
of the Department of Justice is a great one.
The law is a servant of our society. Its enforcement
and administration can give more effective meaning to our com-
mon goals. Among these common goals are domestic tranquillity,
the blessings of liberty and the establishment of justice.
These goals do not bring themselves into being.
If we are to have a government of laws and not of
men, then it, particularly, takes dedicated men and women to
accomplish this through their zeal and determination and, also,
their concern for fairness and impartiality, and I know that
this Department always has had such dedicated men and women.
And I recall with great pride the years I spent in this
Department.
We have lived in a time of change and corrosive
skepticism and cynicism concerning the administration of
justice. Nothing can more weaken the quality of life or
more imperil the realization of the goals we all hold dear,
than our failure to make clear, by word and deed, that our
law is not an instrument of partisan purpose and it is
not an instrument to be used in ways which are careless of
the higher values which are within all of us.
Mr. President, when you spoke to me two months ago,
you were eloquent and persausive as to your high aspirations
for this Department, and speaking literally, you moved me.
I am sure that the able men and women of this Department will
join with me in responding to your aspirations.
Thank you.
END
(AT 11:20 A.M. EST)