Coalition Asks to Testify Against Georgia Nominees in Senate

R. Robin McDonald

Daily Report, January 17, 2014, 12:00 AM

A coalition of African-American lawyers and bar associations in Georgia has asked the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman for permission to testify in opposition to six nominees to the federal bench in Georgia at their confirmation hearings.

In a Jan. 10 letter, Advocacy for Action asked Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to allow the organization's representatives to testify against the nominees—four for U.S. District Court judgeships in the Northern District of Georgia and two seats on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

The letter—signed by former Fulton County Chief Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Moore, Holland & Knight partner Charles Johnson, AT&T corporate attorney Suzanne Ockleberry and former Richmond County Superior Court Judge Bettianne Hart—said the request was being made because the White House ignored letters, emails, public protests and press conferences "condemning the secretive process to select these nominees." President Barack Obama also paid little heed to "the lack of diversity in the slate of the proposed nominees as well as concerns with the fitness of some of the candidates slated for confirmation," they wrote.

The bar associations' letter said that they had "no choice but to appear before the Senate to provide live testimony against the nomination of at least two of the [Northern District] nominees—Judge Michael P. Boggs [of the Georgia Court of Appeals] and attorney Mark Cohen [a Troutman Sanders partner]."

The other nominees for the Northern District bench are Leigh Martin May, a partner at Butler Wooten Fryhofer, and DeKalb County State Court Judge Eleanor Ross. The nominees for two open seats on the Eleventh Circuit are U.S. District Court Chief Judge Julie Carnes and Jill Pryor, a partner at Atlanta's Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore.

Florida Judge Not Renominated For Federal Bench

The White House has yanked the federal judicial nomination of Miami-Dade Circuit Judge William Thomas, who is black and openly gay, following opposition from U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.

John Pacenti

 

Daily Business Review, 2014-01-08 10:30:00 PM

 

Attorneys and lawmakers expressed outrage and disappointment Wednesday that the White House withdrew the federal judicial nomination of Miami-Dade Circuit Judge William Thomas, who is black and openly gay.

The nomination was blocked by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Miami Republican. Thomas, who was nominated in November 2012, was the only one of 54 pending judicial candidates not renominated by the Obama administration this week. There are currently 89 vacancies on the federal district and appellate courts. Black judges currently make up 8.3 percent of the federal judiciary.

Thomas was on the bench Wednesday and did not return a call for comment by deadline.

Rubio initially supported Thomas after interviewing him for an open federal bench position in the Southern District of Florida but reversed himself last summer.

"The message that it sends is chilling and shocking, not only to the gay community but to the black community, that Senator Rubio and the Tea Party have such power that they would be able to block a qualified black gay judge with one voice," said attorney C. Chad Cronon, president of the Central Florida Gay and Lesbian Association in Orlando.

Miami attorney Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a member of Duane Morris' national diversity and inclusion committee, said, "This is another example of the fact we are permitting extreme and discriminatory views to color how we select judges." She said she was discouraged and troubled that the Obama administration is "caving on an issue of such importance, which is the independence of the judiciary and the right of people to have their sexual orientation protected." 

Rubio cited two criminal cases handled by Thomas even though prosecutors in both cases urged him to support Thomas. Rubio stalled Thomas' nomination by refusing to submit a blue slip to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would have allowed a vote. Rubio was not persuaded by a letter-writing and petition campaign on behalf of Thomas organized by South Florida attorneys.

'Unfortunate'

Coral Gables criminal defense attorney David Tucker collected 2,148 signatures on an electronic petition supporting Thomas. "We all get to ruminate on the politicization of the federal judicial nominating process," he said. "This is a tragedy, and I'm sad that this not only happened but we allowed it to happen. Whatever happened to doing the right thing?"

Asked about Thomas, Rubio's spokeswoman, Brooke Sammon, referred to a previous statement, saying, "The nomination of Judge Thomas has also been thoroughly reviewed, and Senator Rubio has determined that Thomas's record on the state court raises serious concerns about his fitness for a lifetime federal appointment."court raises serious concerns about his fitness for a lifetime federal appointment."

Rubio questioned Thomas' judicial temperament and willingness to impose appropriate criminal sentences. His office cited the sentencing of Michele Traverso, who received 22 months in prison followed by two years of house arrest for a hit-and-run accident that killed a bicyclist on Miami's Rickenbacker Causeway. The senator also noted Thomas wept when he sentenced Joel Lebron to death for a 2002 gang rape. 

Cronon said the criminal cases cited by Rubio are red herrings because any judge's record could be culled for outliers, and Rubio has repeatedly proven he is no friend of the black and gay communities.

Rubio also withheld a blue slip for months on another black judicial nominee, Nassau Circuit Judge Brian Davis, who waited nearly two years for confirmation in December.

The Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Bar Association, the Gwen S. Cherry Black Women Lawyers Association, the Haitian Lawyers Association and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People held a news conference last summer to call attention to Rubio's opposition to both black judges. Leigh-Ann Buchanan, president-elect of the Ferguson association, noted Wednesday that Thomas was found to be exceptionally qualified judge by the American Bar Association. "It's unfortunate what happened in this circumstance," she said.

U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., told the Huffington Post on Tuesday, "All of sudden for Senator Rubio to say Judge Thomas is not suitable is just not right." She added, "I don't know what more I can do to make Senator Rubio understand that what he is doing is wrong."

New York attorney Joe Patrice with Lankler Siffert & Wohl wrote on the Above the Law blog that torpedoing Thomas should help Rubio with his base after a fallout over immigration reform.

"Senator Rubio is just clutching at straws to get back his conservative bona fides, tragically lost when he started pushing the controversial idea that everyone of Mexican descent shouldn't be rounded up and exiled," Patrice wrote. "Making a punching bag out of a black and gay judge is a healthy start to getting back all-important presidential primary voters."

Rep. Scott Seeks to Block Obama's Judicial Nominees

 Says Obama's picks for six federal judgeships do not represent Georgia's demographics, values

 

By R. Robin McDonald 

 

Daily Report,  January 7, 2014

 

A Georgia Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives is seeking permission to testify at the Senate confirmation hearings for six nominees to federal judicial posts in Georgia, saying outraged constituents claim the candidates "are unrepresentative of the demographics and values of the state."

 

Rep. David Scott, whose 13th District includes parts of Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fulton and Henry counties, called the selection process "an abomination" for remaining secret until an announcement was made the Friday before Christmas, "an opportune time to avoid negative publicity,

 

In a letter delivered Friday to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Scott asked to testify at hearings for two nominees for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and four other candidates for posts in the Northern District of Georgia. Scott's goal: to share "very important and critical background information" with the committee about the nominees themselves as well as how the state's congressional Democrats were "shut out from any input in the selection process by the White House."

 

He wrote, "We must not allow lifetime appointed judges to be rammed through the hearing process without sufficient input from the people who will be affected by their future judicial actions."

 

Scott's letter to Leahy also indicated that confirmation hearings for Georgia's nominees could begin soon. A committee spokeswoman could not be reached for comment.

 

Scott's letter was sent two weeks after he and fellow House Democrats from Georgia, John Lewis and Hank Johnson, called on President Barack Obama to withdraw the nominations. They argued that the slate of candidates lacked diversity, as only one of the six is an African-American. They also claimed the majority of the candidates failed to reflect a more progressive judicial philosophy.

 

At a Dec. 23 news conference, Lewis said he was prepared to testify against two of the president's district court nominees, Judge Michael Boggs of the Georgia Court of Appeals and Troutman Sanders partner Mark Cohen. "It's not too late to turn this train around," Lewis said.

 

Lewis later told a USA Today columnist, "It's not easy to stand up to your president and say you got it wrong. But we've got to look beyond the next three years. These people are going to get a lifetime appointment."

 

Lewis' spokeswoman could not be reached Monday for comment.

 

Michael Andel, Scott's chief of staff, told the Daily Report on Monday that Scott's desire to testify against a Democratic president's nominees "is unusual. I don't know if it's happened before." Scott was prompted to do so, he said, by a groundswell of outrage and concern from constituents following the White House's Dec. 19 announcements.

 

The White House has nominated U.S. District Chief Judge Julie Carnes, who was appointed to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush, to the U.S. Court of Appeals to the Eleventh Circuit. She joins nominee Jill Pryor, a partner at Atlanta's Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore whose nomination has been stalled for nearly two years.

 

In addition to Cohen and Boggs, who was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, the White House also nominated Leigh Martin May—a partner at Butler, Wooten & Fryhofer—and DeKalb County State Court Judge Eleanor Ross, who is also a Deal appointee and the only African-American nominee.

 

The slate of nominees was a compromise the White House carved out with Georgia's two Republican senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, who blocked Pryor's nomination by refusing to return blue slips to the Judiciary Committee, a Senate courtesy that gives senators virtual veto power over their home state's judicial nominations and one that Leahy scrupulously follows.

 

Chambliss and Isakson also refused to return blue slips for attorney Natasha Perdew Silas, a public defender whom the president had nominated along with U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Walker as part of an earlier package deal to fill two vacancies on Northern Georgia's District Court. The nominations of the two women, both African-Americans, were withdrawn by the president at the end of 2011.

 

The president announced the newest nominations despite concerns that Scott and Georgia's other four Democratic congressmen had raised in a letter to the White House last September and in a subsequent meeting with White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. At that meeting, Scott told the Daily Report on Monday, the congressmen were informed that "the deed was done."

 

Scott said Monday that he expects Lewis, to whom the president awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, will join him in testifying at the confirmation hearings along with the Rev. C.T. Vivian and the Rev. Joseph Lowery, whom the president also has presented with the freedom medal for their civil rights work.

 

Scott said that if Leahy grants him permission to testify, he intends to talk about Boggs' voting record as a former Democratic state legislator from Waycross. Scott singled out Boggs' 2001 vote not to change the state's flag, which then was embedded with the Confederate battle emblem.

 

He also pointed to the former legislator's votes authorizing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Georgia; his cosponsorship of legislation requiring parental notification before young women could obtain an abortion; and his support of special "Choose Life" auto tags.

 

The congressman also took issue with Cohen's defense of the state's voter photo ID law as a special assistant state attorney general, calling it a form of voter suppression. Cohen, a former assistant attorney general and former counsel to Democratic Gov. Zell Miller, was hired to defend the law by the state's first black attorney general, Thurbert Baker.

 

"These attitudes … are not reflective of the population of Georgia," Scott insisted. "For the president of the United States to put these people in these lifetime positions is wrong. … This is a bad deal; a terrible, tragic mistake."

 

Boggs and Cohen have not responded to the criticism, the standard protocol required by the White House for judicial nominees. They could not be reached for comment on Monday.

 

Scott said that since the president "capitulated" to the state's Republican senators, he is turning to the Senate Judiciary Committee for help in short-circuiting at least some of the nominations while protesting a deal in which the state's Democratic congressional delegation "had no say and on top of that were shut out."

 

"Sometimes it's better to have these positions vacant than to put people in with prejudiced opinions against African-Americans, against gay people, against women's reproductive rights," Scott said. "These attitudes are not reflective of the population of Georgia."

 

"We cannot allow, to sit on the courts for life, people who believe in the Confederate flag in this day and time" with the hatred and bigotry it has come to symbolize, he added. "It can't stand. Georgia is better than that."

A Judicial Nominee's Troublesome Legislative Record

Following a secretive and highly-flawed process, the White House recently announced a deeply troublesome slate of nominees for the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Several elected officials and community leaders and organizations have questioned whether the recent nominees truly embody the progressive legacy that would be expected from this Administration. 

 

They point, for example, to Michael Boggs, who currently serves on the Georgia Court of Appeals, but who served in the Georgia General Assembly from 2001 through 2004. 

 

According to research by State Senator Vincent Fort, Boggs' significant votes as a legislator, from a constituency far-removed from the Northern District of Georgia, included the following:

 

Marriage Equality.  Boggs voted for the legislation authorizing the referendum on the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Georgia. SR 595, March 31, 2004.

 

Women's Rights: Boggs co-sponsored legislation requiring parental notification and to start a Choose Life Program.

• Parental Notification: These measures made it more difficult for young women seeking health care to obtain the services they need by requiring their parent to be notified.

Information and statistics show that young women seeking reproductive health care DO inform an adult. While young women may not tell the parents (due to the shame of possible sexual abuse), they do seek the guidance of an adult, such as an aunt, grandmother or adult friend. 

These restrictive laws are part of a larger effort to curtail women's access to reproductive health care. They are meant to frighten young women in an attempt to force them to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term. HB 466, 2003-2004 Session. The legislation did not pass.

• Choose Life Programs and Car Tags. Using the state's law to create special license tags, conservative extremists attempted to use the Department of Motor Vehicles to create a funding stream for programs that deny access to women's health care. Money from the purchase of a Choose Life license plate would have provided backdoor funding for a specific political policy agenda.  HB 286, 2003-2004 Session. The legislation did not pass.

 

The State Flag. Boggs voted against legislation removing the Confederate Emblem from the Georgia State Flag. HB 16, January 24, 2001.

 

Rev. Joseph Lowery has observed that Boggs is part of a slate of nominees that is "not representative of the state."  It is certainly questionable whether Boggs' views are representative of the people of the Northern District of Georgia.

Georgia Congressmen Oppose Federal Judge Nominees

Claims of lack of diversity and flawed process are behind request to President Obama to withdraw six names.

By Alyson M. Palmer

Daily Report

December 26, 2013

 

Four Georgia Democratic congressmen on Monday called on President Barack Obama to withdraw his nominations for six federal judgeships in the state, claiming the White House's selection process was flawed and resulted in too little racial diversity.

 

Representatives John Lewis, David Scott and Hank Johnson, all African-American legislators for the Atlanta area, made their views plain at a Monday morning press conference at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. They said Rep. Sanford Bishop Jr. of southwest Georgia supported their efforts.

 

Joined by other African-American leaders who opposed the slate of nominees—all but one of them white—the congressmen focused on two district court nominees. They targeted Troutman Sanders partner Mark Cohen for his defense of the state's voter photo ID law as a special assistant attorney general and Judge Michael Boggs of the Georgia Court of Appeals for stances he took in the General Assembly against abortion rights and gay rights and for a state flag containing a Confederate symbol.

The Rev. C.T. Vivian—whom Obama awarded the Medal of Freedom last month—called for a national campaign, saying the message against the nominees must reach "every street corner" and "every TV set."

 

Lewis said he was prepared to testify against Boggs and Cohen before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, calling them "unfit" for the federal posts.

 

"We believe it is not too late to turn this train around," said Lewis.

 

Obama's nominees for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit are Bondurant Mixson & Elmore partner Jill Pryor, who was nominated to the post nearly two years ago, and Northern District Chief Judge Julie Carnes. The district court nominees, which includes a nominee to replace Carnes if her promotion is confirmed, are Boggs, Cohen, Leigh Martin May of Butler, Wooten & Fryhofer and Judge Eleanor Ross of DeKalb County State Court.

 

Ross, a former Fulton County assistant district attorney who was tapped by Republican Gov. Nathan Deal to be a judge in DeKalb, is the only African-American among the six nominees.

 

In September, Lewis, Johnson, Scott, Bishop and Rep. John Barrow wrote to White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler about the slate of then-prospective nominees that reportedly had been agreed to by the state's Republican senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson. The letter said the congressmen were "disappointed, shocked, and chagrined" when they learned of the White House's willingness to consider a package deal of prospective nominees so lacking in diversity and that had been put together without their knowledge.

 

Holland & Knight partner Charles Johnson, coconvenor of a group of African-American bar associations that orchestrated Monday's event, complained that the process for selecting nominees for the Northern District and Eleventh Circuit was "selective, secretive, exclusionary and highly flawed." He said Obama should start over with a more open process.

 

 

With no Georgia Democrat in the Senate, which must confirm judicial nominees, the process by which Obama seeks recommendations in the state has been vague. In his first term, Georgia's Democratic congressmen appointed a screening committee to make suggestions on district court judgeships in secret.

 

Lewis said a list of recommended nominees provided to the White House by the Georgia Democratic congressional delegation apparently had been "discarded" by the state's senators. He said he didn't want to identify any of their suggested nominees, although he described a woman that appeared to be V. Natasha Perdew Silas. Obama nominated her to the district court in January 2011 but dropped the nomination after the senators objected.

 

Asked Monday if the congressional panel should have been more transparent—such as publicizing the names of applicants and recommendations—Hank Johnson said the process is "discreet" but should "inclusive." A lawyer, Johnson declined to say whom he would like to see nominated, saying, "We're not looking to put people's aspirations out to the public view before they're actually nominated."

 

Scott criticized the nomination of Cohen in light of his legal defense of the voter ID law, which Scott said was targeted at suppressing African-American voters.

 

 

Emphasizing that both Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, are black, Scott said, "There is no hurt like hurt by the one you love."

 

He did not mention that Cohen had been appointed to defend the law by then-state Attorney General Thurbert Baker, also a black Democrat. Norman Underwood, the chairman of Governor Zell Miller's Judicial Nominating Commission and one of Cohen's law partners, has said that when Cohen served as Miller's executive counsel, he worked closely with the governor as Miller began a concerted effort to appoint what became an unprecedented number of African-Americans as judges across the state.

 

State Senator Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, took to the pulpit to highlight certain aspects of Boggs' record as a Democratic member of the state House of Representatives from Waycross for 2000 to 2004. Fort previously had publicized Boggs' 2001 vote to retain Georgia's old state flag, which was embedded with the Confederate battle emblem. On Monday he offered more research, saying Boggs had spoken in favor of the legislation that authorized the 2004 state referendum banning gay marriage and had sponsored anti-abortion legislation during the 2003-04 legislative session. Materials Fort distributed to the media showed Boggs sponsored bills, neither of which came to a vote that session, to strengthen the state's law requiring minors seeking an abortion to notify a parent or go before a judge and to create "Choose Life" license plates.

 

"Michael Boggs is on the wrong side of history," said Fort.

 

Federal judicial nominees generally do not comment pursuant to White House protocol, and neither Cohen nor Boggs could be reached for comment on Monday.

 

Atlanta Leaders Call on the President to Withdraw Slate of Judicial Nominees

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                   December 21, 2013

ATLANTA--A broad coalition of elected officials and community leaders will announce their opposition to the slate of candidates nominated last Thursday by the White House to sit on the bench in the Northern District of Georgia at a news conference on Monday, December 23rd.

The news conference will be held at Ebenezer Baptist Church, 449 Auburn Avenue, NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30312, at 11:00 a.m on Monday December 23rd.

The group cites serious concerns that the proposed candidates do not adequately reflect the diversity of the northern district and that the selection process lacked meaningful community input.  Additionally, the coalition finds it troubling that the nominees include persons who have advocated in favor of Georgia's voter ID laws and flying of the Confederate Battle Emblem as part of the Georgia State flag.

Three recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom--Rep. John Lewis, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, and the Rev. C.T. Vivian--will speak, as well as U.S. Reps. David Scott and Hank Johnson.

 Representatives of the Atlanta and Georgia Chapters of the NAACP, The Coalition for the People's Agenda, and the SCLC will also be present.

The Press Conference is organized by  Advocacy for Action, a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization.   For more information contact Charles Johnson (Charles.johnson@hklaw.com) or Suzy Ockleberry (so1639@att.com).

Emancipation Day Reconsidered

December 6: A National Holiday to Celebrate the End of Slavery

By James A. Wynn, Jr.

The time has come for Congress to declare a new national holiday. The movie Lincoln highlights the struggle over the passage and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, the historic constitutional choice that officially ended slavery in America. The triumph that the Thirteenth Amendment represents—not just for African-Americans, but for all Americans—should be celebrated, and we should celebrate it today, December 6. No amendment has a greater or simpler declarative force than the Thirteenth. It states uncompromisingly that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United States . . . .” The amendment also empowered Congress to enact laws to enforce its substantive protections.

The significance of the Thirteenth Amendment cannot be overstated. Among other things, it extended the phrase “We the People” in the Preamble to the Constitution to all Americans, it ended the implicit sanctioning of slavery in the original Constitution, and it made clear that abolishing slavery was the sovereign will of the people.

Chief Justice Roger Taney’s opinion for a majority of the United States Supreme Court in the notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision, left no legal argument that the phrase “We the People” in the Preamble to the original Constitution might someday be read to extend to slaves. According to the Court, African-Americans were not intended to be included in “We the People” because “[t]hey had for more than a century before been regarded as an inferior order . . . and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” The Thirteenth Amendment repudiated and effectively overruled Dred Scott and all it stood for, making clear that neither African-Americans, nor anyone else, could “ justly and lawfully” be enslaved in this great country.

Further, the Thirteenth Amendment ended the original Constitution’s implicit sanctioning of slavery. Although the word “slave” appears nowhere in the original Constitution, the document tacitly accepted slavery. For example, as a result of an infamous compromise between Northern and Southern states, Article I of the Constitution based political representation in the House of Representatives on the population of “free Persons” and three-fifths “of all other Persons” in each State. Thus, despite the Declaration of Independence’s majestic pronouncement that “all men are created equal,” the original Constitution indicated otherwise. With the Thirteenth Amendment, the Constitution expressly rejected slavery.

Finally, because it had to be “ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several states,” as required by Article V of the Constitution, the Thirteenth Amendment constituted an exercise of the sovereign will of the people and the democratic process speaking through Congress and then through the ratification by an overwhelming majority of state legislatures. By contrast, the Emancipation Proclamation, an 1863 declaration freeing slaves in Confederate territory, was a wartime measure issued unilaterally by Lincoln.

The Thirteenth Amendment has been the subject of far less litigation than the Fourteenth. As a result, it has suffered unjustly in obscurity. And to the extent we celebrate it at all, we do so on the wrong day, February 1—the anniversary of the day President Lincoln signed a Joint Resolution submitting the proposed amendment to the States for ratification. Addressing a crowd outside the White House after he signed the Joint Resolution, Lincoln remarked that the occasion was one “of congratulation to the country and to the whole world.” In 1948, President Truman declared February 1 “National Freedom Day.”

Yet despite the symbolic significance of Lincoln’s act, the Thirteenth Amendment had no legal effect until the States adopted it. Indeed, Lincoln’s signature was unnecessary, and no other proposed amendment has been submitted to a president for signature.  

The Thirteenth Amendment was put to all thirty-six States, including those formerly part of the Confederacy. Georgia became the twenty-seventh state to ratify the amendment, on December 6, 1865, marking the achievement of the three-fourth supermajority necessary to amend the Constitution. The Supreme Court has held that constitutional amendments take legal effect when ratified. Thus, December 6, 1865, marks the arguably most significant, and yet perhaps most unrecognized, date in African-American history.

Sadly, Lincoln never lived to see the Thirteenth Amendment ratified: He was assassinated on April 15, 1865, nearly eight months before Georgia provided the decisive vote in favor of ratification. No doubt Lincoln would have celebrated the day our nation constitutionally enshrined an abhorrence of further slavery, the evil institution against which Lincoln had fought so hard.

No longer should the Thirteenth Amendment rest in silence. We should begin our holiday season by celebrating today the 147th anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment’s ratification. It is a day not just for African-Americans, but for all Americans, to commemorate a moment when our Constitution was improved by spelling out the truth that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rightly called self-evident: “All men are created equal.”

As wonderful as the movie Lincoln is, films are fleeting. A more permanent memorial must be erected to recognize the single greatest day for American liberty. It is time for Congress to act.

All Rights Reserved

James A. Wynn, Jr. is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.