I made the decision. I'm accountable.
The Department of Justice is committed to asking one central question of everything we do: What is the right thing to do? Now that can produce debate, and I want it to be spirited debate. I want the lawyers of America to be able to call me and tell me: Janet, have you lost your mind?
Under a death penalty statute that is going to stand up to constitutional muster, you look at the aggravating circumstances and the mitigating circumstances.
I think police officers can work with social workers and public health nurses to do so much in terms of addressing the problem of American families, of children in American families as a whole, and giving them an opportunity to get off to a fresh start, to become self-sufficient, to lead safe, constructive lives.
I made a promise to myself when I graduated from law school that I would never do anything that I didn't enjoy doing, and almost every day of the year since that June of 1963, I have awakened glad that I was going to work, glad that I was going to court, glad that I was going to grapple with a problem.
This is a beautiful country. Each of us has a favorite river, a mountain, just a patch of sky for some of us. I want to use the law to make sure that the waters, the land, and the skies of this nation are protected.
What good is telling America's children that they will have equal opportunity for education if they don't have the skills that will even get them to the point of benefiting from education, because they didn't have the child care, the health care that would enable them to grow as strong and constructive human beings?
I think lawyers who engage in pro bono service to protect those who cannot help themselves are truly the heroes and the heroines of the legal profession.
The first job I ever had in my life was in the Dade County Sheriff's Office in the Identification Bureau in the summer that I graduated from high school and was getting ready to go to college.
I'm a scuba diver but not certified.
My mother taught us to play baseball, to bake a cake, to play fair - she beat the living daylights out of us sometimes, and she loved us with all her heart; she taught her favorite poets, and there is no child care in the world that will ever be a substitute for what that lady was in our life.
I collected child support in Dade County, and they wrote a rap song about me, so the kids knew about it, and they started asking me questions about child support. What happens if she wastes the money? What happens if he doesn't pay? And I answered the questions.
Unless the law issues from all of the people, some of the people will feel left out. They will come to feel alienated. They will be angry. And this will not be a cohesive democracy.
All lawyers are going to have to - if we really want to attain civil justice - address the issue of how complicated we have made the laws: what we have done to ensnarl the American people in bureaucratic rules and regulations that make access to services or compliance with the law sometimes difficult, if not impossible.
One of the reasons I love the law is because I was raised in family - my grandfather was a lawyer, but more importantly, my grandmother was his secretary. And she taught me that lawyers were some of the most civil, most courteous - and in those days, most courtly - people that she knew.
I want there to be a real partnership between the Department of Justice in Washington and U.S. attorneys.
While service in the Department of Justice is itself one of the highest forms of public service, the Department further strides to increase access to justice for all and to strengthen our communities.
There are those who profess to support law enforcement but who have attempted to undermine the efforts of hard-working officers who make difficult decisions.
Schools can do extraordinary things given the chance; teachers can do remarkable things if we eliminate the paperwork that sometimes binds them and give them a chance to really teach in our schools.
When I went to law school, I had Roger Fisher for Civil Procedure. I never heard anything about negotiations.
