A Conversation on Voting Rights and Equality with AG Eric Holder
The UNLV Boyd School of Law and the Senator Harry Reid Civic Dialogue Program
Present
"A CONVERSATION ON VOTING RIGHTS AND EQUALITY"
ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER
82ND ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES (2009-2015)
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SENATOR HARRY REID
MONDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2020
NOON PT
ABOUT ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER
Eric H. Holder, Jr., was born in the Bronx, New York. He attended public schools, graduating from Stuyvesant High School, where he earned a Regents Scholarship. He attended Columbia College as an American History major, graduating in 1973.
He then went on to attend Columbia Law School, where he clerked at the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund and the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. Upon graduating in 1976, he moved to Washington and joined the Department of Justice as part of the Attorney General's Honors Program. He was assigned to the newly formed Public Integrity Section and was tasked with investigating and prosecuting official corruption at the local, state and federal levels.
In 1988, Mr. Holder was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to become an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He sat on the bench until 1993, when President Bill Clinton appointed him U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. In 1997, President Clinton named Mr. Holder as Deputy Attorney General, making him the first African American to hold that post.
Prior to becoming Attorney General, Mr. Holder was a litigation partner at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington.
Mr. Holder was sworn in as the 82nd Attorney General of the United States on February 3, 2009. Holder was a staunch opponent of legal limitations on the executive branch's ability to prosecute the War on Terror. Additionally, he was a vocal proponent of defending the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was reauthorized in 2006 with bipartisan support. Under his tenure, the DOJ sued Shelby County, Alabama for a violation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. He is now a partner at Covington, Chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and works cloesely with The Eric Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia University.